In Bloomington, where work for anybody was scarce, underpaid women workers were in abundance. The top of the pay scale for women in Monroe County was $7 .SO a week. When RCA opened, it paid 17.5 cents to 19.5 cents an hour, or $7.00 to $7.80 for a forty-hour week. This scale placed entry-level pay in competition with some of the very best wages available to women in the area. Moreover, rates of pay quickly rose to 23 cents and 25 cents an hour, a rate that made factory work much more financially appealing than any other job for working-class women. This tactic RCA called paying a "community wage"-a system of offering marginally better pay than other blue-collar jobs in the area in order to attract the finest workers. The "community wage" concept also cut the other way. When the Bloomington workers sought raises to bring their rate of pay up to those of other RCA workers in the country after World War II, the company rejected their request because their pay was deemed "appropriate in terms of community and industry." In sum, while offering very valuable and much-needed work to Bloomington women, RCA reaped the real financial bonanza, as the female operators in Camden started at between 40 and 50 cents an hour-up to double what Bloomington women could expect.