Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850-1920

Chapter 1. Female Proprietors and the Businesses They Started

CHAPTER 1 Female Proprietors and the Businesses They Started In  Mrs. Ann Hudson’s clothing store, on Market Street at Seventh, was situated to draw attention from the San Francisco men who attended functions at the Odd Fellows building on the adjacent block. Any of the working-class men who dominated the club’s membership likely found the location convenient, since so many must have walked by it on the way to meetings and social functions at the Odd Fellows hall. Yet while Hudson ’s prominent sign and window display no doubt caught the attention of pedestrians passing by, the store did not stand out. Nestled between a millinery store, window shade retailer, sausage factory, and corner liquor store, her ‘‘Ladies and Gents New and Used Clothing’’ business was simply part of the commercial landscape, a customary sight to San Franciscans who encountered women-owned businesses on a daily basis.1 This was especially true during the s and s, when female proprietorship in the city reached its peak. Thereafter storefronts such as Hudson’s were on the wane, as mechanization transformed the production of clothing and department store competition made it increasingly difficult to succeed as a small-scale independent business owner. For each of the five main types of businesses women operated—apparel, laundry, accommodations, beauty, and retail—this trend, in which industry-specific changes altered the opportunities women pursued, was repeated. Growing employment in clerical occupations, a new and burgeoning field for women, further reduced female proprietorship. By , in fact, San Franciscans had witnessed dramatic changes in the commercial contours of their city and would have been hard pressed to locate the kinds of women-owned businesses that had been a dime a dozen just four decades earlier. Apparel stores such as Hudson’s were among the most common types of establishments operated by businesswomen throughout the country, but in San Francisco female proprietors demonstrated a preference for accommodations businesses. Women-owned hotels, boardinghouses, lodging houses, saloons, and restaurants catered to laborers from working-class neighborhoods , uptown gentlemen, and traveling families. This preponderance of female-operated businesses was not coincidental but a calculated response to the unusually high commercial opportunities in San Francisco’s accommodations industry. That women responded to such market incentives underscores that capital intentions, not domestic proclivities or happenstance, guided their business decisions. On the other hand, female proprietors’ responses to the city’s commercial conditions were constrained by their own economic and cultural circumstances . Most women-owned businesses were modest establishments operated by immigrant women. Whether or not she was an immigrant, Hudson herself was typical in that her commercial and residential addresses were the same. Most likely she lived in a room or small apartment located above or behind her store. Such an arrangement facilitated women’s need to find a source of income that did not require them to leave their homes. This seemed especially important to Irish immigrant women, who traditionally did not work outside their homes after marriage and who comprised the largest individual group of businesswomen in the city. The fact that native-born white women, the largest group of women in the paid labor force, constituted much smaller proportions of the population of female business owners suggests the degree to which proprietorship was a humble pursuit, one not expected to bring women glory or riches. Examining who San Francisco’s female proprietors were, the types of businesses they operated, and when they operated them, therefore, illustrates important proprietary patterns. It highlights the rise and fall of female proprietorship in the city, the similarities and differences between women’s business ownership in San Francisco and that in other cities, and the kinds of women most likely to pursue proprietorship. All are important foundations for understanding female proprietorship in San Francisco and the capital intentions that guided women’s commercial endeavors there. Before we can make sense of Mrs. Hudson, we must understand the patterns she represented . Female Proprietors  imagining businesswomen in the commercial landscape When the Women’s Banking Department at the Bank of Italy opened in the s, it drew a steady stream of female proprietors who were concentrated in four main industries: accommodations, apparel, retail, and beauty. Among the accommodations proprietors were Miss de Gomez, who operated Courtyard Tea Rooms, and Mrs. Washington, owner of the Kentucky Tavern. Apparel proprietors included Mrs. Berry and Miss Ready, proprietors, respectively , of the Berry...