In Flux: A Statistical Overview of the YWCA of Greater Portland
in the Twentieth Century

By Eric Loomis

My initial intention was to explain the membership of the PDX YWCA, as well as their hiring practices, and how these two things may have changed throughout the course of the war years. I planned to do this primarily by looking at statistics, which I did, but this now left me with another problem. I found there was plenty I could say about their membership, more in fact than I had initially expected, but their employment practices more or less remained a mystery, and now I am in a position to realize why. Aside from a few janitorial positions and such, most of the routine tasks, including running committees and leading group programs, the majority of what the YW seemed to do, most of the work was done on a volunteer basis. What I ended up with were statistics on the volunteers in the YW, but little or nothing on employment. As a result, the focus of my final argument must also change. I find that, rather than saying things specifically about membership, it is more practical to paint a broader picture. There appear to be three main areas that I have usable statistics on: membership/leadership, recreational participation, and service participation.

The first category includes all regular, due paying members, be they associate or electoral , as well as the volunteer leaders which more or less ran the organization. I put these two groups together because, more or less, a large percentage of the former were also involved in the latter. Electoral members were those who were also had the right to vote on issues within the group. They were, until 1947, limited to those who were involved in Protestant churches only. Associate members were more or less those who paid their dues and were members of the organization, but could not vote. They were not, however, restricted only to those who were Protestant Christians. The volunteers, as I have said, were often also members, but this was not necessarily a requirement for all positions. Included in the statistics under membership was also the Girl Reserves (later the Y-teens). They were not restricted by religion either, being in effect Associate members who were not yet of age. Even so, I class them as participants in the recreational programs, rather than as actual members, partially because their statistics are a lot more similar to the recreational participants.

The second category, Educational/Recreational participants, include all those who are participating in YWCA programs relating to those areas. These include those who attend various classes, including various physical education programs, or those who are involved in various clubs, youth and otherwise.

The Service program participants include those who are involved in health and education, as well as those who have come to the YWCA for help in some way. This includes applicants to the Rooms Registry, applicants to the Employment Office (more or less a non-profit employment agency), and others who come in need of assistance.

This is intended to be a statistical analysis. I will be looking at numbers that I found during six two-hour research sessions at the Portland YWCA and explaining them as best I can based on knowledge I have obtained from outside sources as well as my own theories based on the facts at hand. I may at times bring up certain points of contention, especially those of race, though it is not my intention during the course of this work to delve into these points too deeply. My intent is rather to paint a picture, as best I can, with the numbers that I have. For a deeper look into the individual issues involved, I would refer the reader to the works presented by other members of my research team.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the overall percentage of women in the labor force generally increased. In 1930, women made up 19.7% of the labor force in Oregon. This number increased to 21.9% in 1940. The total number of women in the Oregon work force increased from 81142 to 85244, a growth of 4.8%. By far, the largest categories listed for women in these two periods in Oregon are clerical workers and service workers. This would include any secretarial tasks as well as domestic servants. Professional women form the next largest group.

During the war, there was a massive influx of workers due to the opening of the Keizer shipyards, among other things, during World War II. This brought in large numbers of new workers, both men and women, and considerably increased the number of women who were existent in the Oregon labor force. After the war was over, these numbers dropped, as the industrial jobs decreased and those there were went to the returning soldiers. Even so, the overall numbers of women working did not decrease for long. The numbers continued to increase after a minor dip in the late 1940’s. What changed, however, were the numbers, which often reverted back to their pre-war proportions as women went from their high paying (relatively) industry jobs back into secretarial and domestic service work. Though the roles of the women in the work force seemed to go back to the way they were, the direction society, and younger women, were headed was changing. Many young women married after the war was over and were involved in raising children. Those young women that were in mid-upper class homes often opted now to go to college rather than simply entering the work force or getting married. These were the young women that had traditionally formed a large part of the YW’s participants, and, once they got older, members. This was certain to have an impact on the constituency of the YW after the war. Even so, looking at trends in women’s labor can only yield a partial picture of the trends guiding the YW. One must also look at the YWCA itself.

The YWCA - Young Women’s Christian Association - began in Portland in 1901. At this point in time, things were just getting started all across the country. The YWCA was begun as a national organization in 1906. Portland was nearly 3000 miles away from the National Headquarters in New York. An obvious result of this would be a possible skewing of the agenda of Portland to a bit of a different approach from that of the national organization. Even so, it is valuable to know exactly what the agenda of the national YW was before the start of World War II.

A major theme that seems to come out is that of labor and working class women. Marion Roydhouse points out in her article regarding the YW of the south that "the YW’s role in this change [of the attitude towards working class women] was to create a place where ‘women of all kinds could discuss industrial problems in the light of the teachings of Jesus.’. . ." Their aim was to be a place where working women could congregate, discuss their problems together, and organize effective legislative campaigns, if necessary. This was the theme that more or less prevailed in the YW, at least at a national level, for most of the 1920’s and 30’s.

What the YW failed to accomplish, however, was effectively dealing with the problems of racism, at least in the south. This is not to say that it did not make the attempt to do so, but it was not in the end able to accomplish much. As Roydhouse put it, "The YWCA in the South was able to forge a place in the local community, but it was not able to overcome segregation and could only create an extremely limited interracial movement." In the south, the YW was much more effective at integrating women across the boundaries of class than race. It is important to point out here that there were, at least in Portland, a significant number of blacks in the YWCA. They were, however, generally located all at one branch, the Williams Avenue (1926), while the rest was mostly, if not all, white. So, even though there were blacks, it appears that they were generally segregated at least by practice, if not by actual policy, in Portland.

As the 1930’s progressed, however, the YW’s focus shifted away from labor reform in the south. Roydhouse states that "by the late 1930’s it appeared that the plight of women workers was not sufficiently understood by wealthier women on the board." As well, many of those upper/middle class women who tended to run the YW were also the wives of plant managers or others in the big businesses against whom the working members of the YW were acting. This added a new dimension to the problem as loyalties were called into question and the networks that had been set up during the 1920’s and early ‘30’s began to break down somewhat. By W.W.II, the focus of the YW appears to have shifted away from labor issues, but where did it go?

After the war, and especially into the 1950’s, a growing concern in the minds of Americans, besides communism, was that of race. As Susan Lynn points out in her article about politically active women around the time of World War II, "Racial justice began to emerge as the central paradign of the battle for social justice during the war itself. The crusade for civil rights then gathered momentum in the late 1940’s and 1950’s. . ." The YWCA was certainly a part of this movement, as well. YWCA National declared their interracial policy in 1946, years ahead of many other organizations (with the exception of the NAACP). Now the main agenda, or one of them, appeared to be race. Portland was also involved in this, though there are questions as to the extent of their actual commitment to this policy. They were involved in promoting an pro-interracial stance in the Portland community, but even so, there is evidence of internal racial problems.

Whatever their problems may have been, though, the Portland YWCA was an organization in the midst of change. There was a huge influx of people into Portland during the war years (1942-5), and though this tapered off somewhat after the war, there was still a 16.3% increase in Oregon’s population between 1947 and 1960. At the same time, the total employment in Oregon during that period (1947-60) also went up by 14.4%. One would expect to see a similar increase within the Portland Metropolitan area as well. The total picture, then, is one of rapid expansion, and thus of changes both for the Portland area, and also for the local YWCA. It is interesting to see how this is indicated in the statistics.

The Portland YW tended not to be extremely racially diverse. There are three separate categories for whites: Native Born White, Born of Mixed Parentage, and Foreign Born, while the only two classifications for today’s minorities that existed at the time are those for Black people and Native Americans. The second one of these two generally had no data whatsoever, and so has for my purposes been included with "other," the classification for everyone else. A quick look at the numbers will indicates, though, that perhaps a large reason for their not including many others separate categories was that there weren’t that many "others" to include. Portland of the 1940’s was not exceedingly racially diverse, at least not in the YW.

I would direct the reader’s attention first to the category for members. Here it can be seen that a substantial proportion of the total number of members (not including the GR club), some 12.1%, were black. It was noted in the top margin of the statistical table in the archives that the numbers for membership included the statistics from both the St. Johns and Williams Ave. branches, the second of the two being the primarily black institution. I would guess that, without these extra numbers, there would be very few blacks included at all. Note that under the volunteer leader section, only 3.9% of the total contingent are black, which would seem to indicate a disparity of some kind. Looking at the GR club, we can see that the percentage is no higher.

A look at the numbers for the Recreation and Service participants seems to give the same indication of a lack of black presence. In both cases, less than one percent of the participants are listed as black. It must be noted that the percentage of people listed as "other," whom I would guess to be either Japanese or Chinese in origin, is about the same for members, volunteers, and recreational participants. It is only in the service area that their numbers fall short.

Why, then, is there such a parity between the 12.1% of black members, the 3.9% of black volunteers, and the less than one percent participation of any sort whatsoever? One possibility is that only the numbers for membership include those numbers from Williams Ave., and if these were included, there would then be less of a parity. More likely, I think, is that there simply there was a lack of participation of blacks in many of the YWCA community programs. Whether or not this was encouraged by the white majority is unclear, but I believe that it indicates a certain lack of awareness. They may have been able to point to their membership and say what a wonderful job they were doing of promoting an interracial way of doing things, but none of the other numbers indicate any real success in implementing this policy.

Table II

The very name of the YWCA seems to imply something about the ages of its members and participants. One might expect the constituency to include a fair number of younger women, and to a large degree this is true, though not necessarily totally true.

The membership of the YW has a very different constituency from the program participants, remembering of course that we are including those in the GR club as participants rather than full fledged members. Of those who are full fledged members, a full 83.9% are listed as over 35, with the rest being more or less spread evenly between 18 and 34. The volunteer leaders are not as highly skewed towards the older side, but still, nearly half are over 35. The participants, on the other hand, seem to be skewed the other direction. Both the recreational and service participants have more listed in the younger brackets than the older, though the service participants seem to be even younger, on average, than are the recreational participants.

What emerges is a picture of the YW as a sort of mother figure, with the older, more experienced women helping along their younger, more needy brethren. This is, I think, more or less the type of organization that the YW was attempting to be. The membership in 1939 was older, and, I would tend to believe, mostly middle class women. I think that over time this picture would tend to change. Right now, the Portland YW was, in this regard, acting as it had since its inception. The numbers and trends of the nation during and after the war would seem to suggest that this might change.

Table III

It is known from above that the three largest categories of those women who were employed in 1940 are Service workers, Clerical workers, and professionals. These categories are, to a degree, indicated by the three categories of occupation listed on Table III. Business includes clerical workers, industrial includes service workers, and the Professionals have their own category. It is important to note, however, that the industrial category includes also those jobs that women would be quite often taking up during the war years in the shipyards.

As there was with age, there is again a difference in constituency between the members and the participants. A full 68% of those who are members of the YW are listed as a "at home." At the same time, those who were participants have a much greater tendency to be gainfully employed, when they are old enough to be (the prep category indicates those in preparatory school). Also, in this case, there is a substantial difference in the constituency in the participants of the recreational and service programs. Those in the recreational program seem to be fairly evenly spaced between Business, Industrial, and "at home." The service participants are, on the other hand, largely industrial or service workers of some kind.

In the 1920’s and 30’s, the YW was known for its commitment to labor reform and its commitment to giving working women a place to come and congregate where they could voice their opinions and be heard, as well as to have a fellowship with other women in general. I think these numbers seem to indicate a commitment to this policy in the Portland YWCA. While they may not have been at the forefront of any sweeping labor reform, at least they were providing a space where these working women could go, congregate, learn, and be helped out with the problems that they were facing in their lives. As Lynn points out in her article, "women in the post war period continued to work through older voluntary groups [perhaps like the YW]. . ." She also states that "women tend to emphasize connectedness with others and devote more energy towards nurturing personal relationships and building networks of support." This commitment very much continued during and after the war, though it may have been overshadowed by issues of race.

Table IV

Traditionally, the YWCA was known as a religious organization, being committed, among other things, to bringing young women to Christ. There is little evidence that this is much in practice in Portland of the 1940’s. Even so, the YW continued to be an organization with a highly religious constituency. While they may not have devoted much time to evangelism, the YW became instead a place where Christian women could go to congregate with other Christian women. It had become a place of common ground, where all could be comfortable. As can be seen above, the vast majority of members of the YW were Protestant, a statistic largely dictated by policy rather then simple practice. The majority of those who participated in the programs, when they listed a religion, listed Protestant as well. Even so, the other religions represented a much larger minority than in the official members.

This indicates, as do the other statistics, participants who come from a much more diverse group than do the members. Members seem to be older, at home, and overwhelmingly Protestant. The participants seem to be younger, though they span a wide range of ages, more likely to be employed, and, though still mainly Protestant, more diverse than the members. The only area where the members seem to be more diverse is in the area of race. Those who are not white, though, seem to be located more or less totally at a single location, segregated from the main branch by practice if not by policy.

Where, then, did these numbers go? Did they change as has been theorized above, and if so, how? To begin to see these changes, we will look first at a few of the service portions of the YW.

Both the Rooms Registry and the Employment Office were branches in the service arm of the Portland YWCA. The Rooms Registry was a list of available that the YW kept on hand to aid those young women who came to them looking for a place to stay. YW volunteers would go out and find private residences and such that had rooms available and, if so, would inspect them to make sure they were up to the YW’s standard. If they were, they would be added to the list and young women who applied to the YW for housing would then be placed, if accepted, in a room on the list that met whatever needs they had. The Employment Office was a non-profit listing of jobs, a lot like a temp agency today, where young women who came in looking for a job could be referred to certain employers who happened to be looking for workers. Once the state Employment Office was put in place, the one that the YW had was downsized considerably though it was not, at least during the 1940’s, completely removed.

Table V - Comparison of statistics

As can be seen from above, the YWCA handled over 20,000 Room Registry applicants in 1944-5 alone, which is an impressive statistic when one realizes that that amount represents a substantial fraction of the entire Portland population of the period. Note again that, compared to the total, there are few minorities listed as having been served by either office, with the exception of the Employment Office in 1945. This is odd in some ways, as the large immigration during the war years included a large minority contingent. Racially, it would appear, the overall organization has not changed much since 1939 with respect to its policy and practices, or if it has, minorities are disinclined to go there for help. Either way, whatever problems they may have been having are far from being solved, though the 1945 statistic may be an indication that this is changing.

Table VI

Looking at Table VI, it can be seen that, in the case of employment applications, the racial balance remains as it was in 1945, with there being a larger minority contingent than before. With the Rooms Registry, however, this is not the case. For whatever reason, black women were disinclined to seek help in looking for rooms from the YW, but they would appear to be willing to go there seeking a job. This may reflect somewhat the values that many whites probably had at the time. While they were willing to hire a black or other minority individual to be a housemaid or other servant, they were quite against them owning land or living near them. With this in mind, the minorities possibly knew better than to seek rooms from people who probably, in many circumstances, were not willing to even house them (keep in mind that this is referring to the rooms registry, and not the actual YW rooms, for which I have no statistics). That the YW might have continued to work with people like this would be an unfortunate thing if it were the case, considering its pro-interracial stance.

One can also see by this table an overall decrease in the number of Rooms Registry Applicants from 1944-5. There are several things than can account for this. Though it did not disappear entirely, the number of people immigrating to the Portland area decreased after the war was over and the huge need for labor disappeared. In addition, and increase in both the building of homes and marriage created a situation where there were fewer single women that needed to be provided for. This combination of factors is more than enough to account for the decrease in the number of RR applicants. So, in both cases, there are instances of departments that were probably decreased in size after the war was over, though there was more of a drop off in the numbers of RR applicants than for those who applied to the Employment Office.

Overall, then, there can be seen an increase of the numbers of minorities who were applying to be helped, but only in certain areas. Also, overall, there was a downsizing of the numbers serviced after the war was over, though probably not down to pre-war levels.

Table VII

Racially, the membership of the YW did not change much from 1939 to 1944. The Black contingent was now 12.5%, representing a change which, compared pre-war percentage, was not all that significant. With this being the segment which appears to be the most racially diverse, however, it is probably not logical to expect much of a change. One thing that is interesting to note is the designation of Chinese as a minority group, where it was not used in 1939. Maybe, given the immediacy of the war in the Pacific, they finally constructed the existence of Asians as a race, but were reluctant to use Japanese, given its somewhat negative connotation at the time.

What appears more significant is the change in age and profession of the members. While the largest percentage of the members is still over 35 (54.6%), this a much weaker majority than before. There is a strong contingent of members in the 18-24 bracket which was not there 5 years earlier. This is an indication of new blood, bolstered most probably by the wartime immigration, and suggests a fundamental change in constituency. Professionally, the two larger groups in 1939 were the Business and Professional classifications. This is still the case in 1944, but the Industrial group has increased, again most likely because of the war. The "at home" contingent has also proportionally decreased by nearly 20% from 1939, reflecting most probably the influx of new blood. While this "new blood" may have reduced somewhat after the end of the war, it probably did not return to the way it was in 1939.

In 1947, the National changed the membership policy for the YWCA all across the country. The requirement that one be a member of a Protestant church to be a full voting member was abolished and anyone who participated in the YW programs and paid the dues could be a member. Once they signed a statement pledging to uphold the values of the YW, they could be a full voting member. This instigated, I am sure, many changes to the YW nationally, as well as in Portland. Whatever changes the YW in Portland was going through, it more than likely enhanced them. I would argue that the Portland YW was already changing, and the institution of this policy probably only hastened it.

The overall constituency of the YW appeared to be, over time, growing younger and more likely to be employed. While the leadership of he YW may have remained with the "old guard" for some time after the war, it would have inevitably fallen to the younger generation. The differences between members and participants, while already appearing to decrease in severity, were wiped away completely thanks to he new policy. Now participants were members. Religiously, I am sure, the YW also became more diverse over time, spurred again by the 1947 decision. Racially, I do not see quite as clear evidence of change, and there were likely still internal racial problems heading into the 1950’s.

Essentially, the 1940’s were a time of great change for this country as a whole, and the Portland YW was no exception. The war brought with it many sweeping changes for everyone. Marriage age went down, and the family moved out of the city, where the YW was, and into the suburbs. Many young women were either getting married or going to the college, and these were the ones who had traditionally formed the backbone of the YW. The YW shifted now perhaps more towards being an organization dedicated to public service in an era where certain public services were appearing. In essence, it was setting itself up to be in competition with many other groups that it may have not been with before. The YW was going into areas that it was not very familiar with, and the road ahead was one where its old way of doing things was probably not going to work.