WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS:

BY RICHARD T. ELY,

DIRECTOR OF SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, POLITICAL SCIENCE, AND HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON.

The importance of the subject with which the present work deals cannot well be over-estimated. Our age may properly be called the Era of Woman, because everything which affects her receives consideration quite unknown in past centuries. This is well. The motive is twofold: First, woman is valued as never before; and, second, it is perceived that the welfare of the other half of the human race depends more largely upon the position enjoyed by woman than was previously understood.

"If women's wages are small, open new careers to them." As simple as this did the problem of women's wages once appear; but when new avenues of employment were rendered accessible to women, it was found, in some instances, that the wages of men were lowered. A consequence which can be seen in different industrial centres is that a man and a wife working together secure no greater wages than the man alone in industries in which women are not employed. Now, if the result of opening new employments to women is to force all members of the family to work for the wages which the head of the family alone once received, it is manifest that we have a complicated problem.

The conclusion by no means follows that we should go backward, and try to restrict the industrial sphere of woman. It has been well said that revolutions do not go backward; we have to go farther forward to keep the advantages which have been attained, and at the same time lessen the evils which the new order has brought with it.

Mrs. Campbell has been favorably known for years on account of her valuable contributions to the literature of social science, and it gives the present writer great pleasure to have the privilege of introducing this book to the public with a word of commendation.

MADISON, WISCONSIN,

August 29, 1893.

The pages which follow were prepared originally as a prize monograph for the American Economic Association, receiving an award from it in 1891. The restriction of the subject to a fixed number of words hampered the treatment, and it was thought best to enlarge many points which in the allotted space could have hardly more than mention. Acting on this wish, the monograph has been nearly doubled in size, but still must be counted only an imperfect summary, since facts in these lines are in most cases very nearly unobtainable, and, aside from the few reports of Labor Bureaus, there are as yet almost no sources of full information. But as there is no existing manual of reference on this topic, the student of social questions will accept this attempt to meet the need, till more facts enable a fuller and better presentation of the difficult subject.

NEW YORK, August, 1893.

THEIR PAST, THEIR PRESENT, AND THEIR FUTURE.

INTRODUCTION

The one great question that to-day agitates the whole civilized world is an economic question. It is not the production but the distribution of wealth; in other words, the wages question,—the wages of men and women. Nowhere do we find any suggestion that capital and the landlord do not receive a quid pro quo. Instead, the whole labor world cries out that the capitalist and the landlord are enslaving the rest of the world, and absorbing the lion's share of the joint production.

It is impossible for even the most dispassionate or indifferent observer to blink these facts. Proclaim as we may that there is no antagonism between capital and labor,—that their interests are one, and that conditions and opportunities for the worker are always better and better,—practical thinkers and workers deny this conclusion. Wealth has enormously increased, in a far greater ratio than population. Does the laborer receive his due proportion of this increase? One must unhesitatingly answer no. In a country whose life began in the search for freedom, and which professes to give equal opportunity to all, more startling inequality exists than in any other in the civilized world. One of our ablest lawyers, Thomas G. Shearman, has lately written:—

"I assure you I found nothing worse, nothing more degrading, nothing so hopeless, nothing nearly so intolerably dull and miserable as the life I left behind me in the East End of London. Were the alternative presented to me, I would deliberately prefer the life of the savage to that of those people in Christian London. Nothing would please me better—not even to discover a new truth—than to contribute toward the bettering of that state of things which, unless wise and benevolent men take it in hand, will tend to become worse, and to create something worse than savagery,—a great Serbonian bog, which in the long run will swallow up the surface crust of civilization."

We have found, then, that the problem is economic, and concerns distribution only. There is no complaint that the capitalist fails to secure his share. On the contrary, even among the well-to-do, deep-seated alarm is evidenced at the rise and progress of innumerable trusts and syndicates, eliminating competition, which restricts production and raises prices. They make their own conditions; drive from the field small tradesmen and petty industries, or absorb them on their own terms.

Granting all that may be urged as to the capitalists' investment of brain-power and acquired skill, as well as of money with all the risks involved, they are the inactive rather than the active factors in production. They give of their store, while labor gives of its life. Their view is to be reconstructed, and profit-sharing become as much a part of any industry as profit-making.

This is a growing conviction; nor can we wonder that realization of its justice and its possibilities has been a matter of very recent consideration. An often repeated formula becomes at last ingrained in the mental constitution, and any question as to its truth is a sharp shock to the whole structure. We have been so certain of the surpassing advantages of our own country, so certain that liberty and a chance were the portion of all, that to confront the real conditions in our great cities is to most as unreal as a nightmare.

It is the wages problem, then, with which we are to deal,—the wages of men and women; and we must look at it in its largest, most universal aspects. We must dismiss at once any prejudice born of the ignorance, incompetency, or untrustworthiness of many workers. Character is a plant of slow growth; and given the same conditions of birth, education, and general environment it is quite possible we should have made no better showing. We have to-day three questions to be answered:—

1. Why do men not receive a just wage?
2. Why are women in like case?
3. Why do men receive a greater wage than women?

The various schools of political economists differ widely as to the facts which have formulated themselves in what is known as the iron law of wages; this meaning that wages are said to tend increasingly to a minimum which will give but a bare living. For skilled labor the law may be regarded as elastic rather than iron. For unskilled, it is as certainly the tendency, which, if constantly repeated and so intensified, would end as law. Many standard economists regard it as already fixed; and writers like Lasalle, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Marx heap every denunciation upon it.

We must then admit in degree the tendency of wages to a minimum, especially those of unskilled labor, and accept it as one more motive for persistent effort to alter existing conditions and prevent any such culmination.

Take now, in connection with the six heads mentioned as governing the present efficiency of labor, the five enumerated by Adam Smith in his summary of causes for differences in wages: 1. "The agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves. 2. The easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them. 3. The constancy or inconstancy of employment in them. 4. The small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them. 5. The probability or improbability of success in them."

These are conditions which affect the man's right to large or small wage; but all of them presuppose that men are perfectly free to look over the whole industrial field and choose their own employment,—they presuppose the perfect mobility of labor. Let us see what this means.

"Man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported," was written by Adam Smith long ago; and this stands in the way of really free and unhampered competition. Mr. Frederick Harrison, one of the clearest thinkers of the day, has well defined the difference between the seller and the producer of a commodity. He says:—

It is plain, then, that many causes are at work to depress the wages even of skilled workers, far more than can be enumerated here. If this is true for men, how much more strongly can limitations be stated for women, as we ask, "Why do not women receive a better wage?" Many of the reasons are historical, and must be considered in their origin and growth. Taking her as worker to-day, precisely the same general causes are in operation that govern the wages of men, with the added disability of sex, always in the way of equal mobility of labor.

Driven by want, they had pressed into agricultural labor as well, and found equal opposition there also. Mr. Fawcett in the same speech calls attention to the fact of the non-admission of women to the Agricultural Laborers' Union, on the ground that "the agricultural laborers of the country do not wish to recognize the labor of women."

There is more or less reason for such feeling. It arises in part from the newness of the occasion, since in the story of labor as a whole, soon to be considered by us in detail, it is only the last fifty years that have seen women taking an active part. We have already seen that mobility of labor is one of the first essentials, and that women are far more limited in this respect than men.

This brings us to the final question,—Why do men receive a larger wage than women? The conditions already outlined are in part responsible, but with them is bound up another even more formidable.

A LOOK BACKWARD.

The history of women as wage-earners is actually comprised within the limits of a few centuries; but her history as a worker runs much farther back, and if given in full, would mean the whole history of working humanity. The position of working women all over the civilized world is still affected not only by the traditions but by the direct inheritance of the past, and thus the nature of that inheritance must be understood before passing to any detailed consideration of the subject under its various divisions. It is the conditions underlying history and rooted in the facts of human life itself which we must know, since from the beginning life and work have been practically synonymous, and in the nature of things remain so.

"The basis of all oppression is economic dependence on the oppressor," is the word of a very keen thinker and worker in the German Reichstag to-day; and he adds: "This has been the condition of women in the past, and it still is so. Woman was the first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave before the slave existed."

When the struggle for existence was in its lowest and most brutal form, and man respected nothing but force, the disabled member of society, if man, was disposed of by stab or blow; if woman, and valuable as breeder of fresh fighters, simply reduced to slavery and passive obedience. Marriage in any modern sense was unknown. A large proportion of female infants were killed at birth. Battle, with its recurring periods of flight or victory, made it essential that every tribe should free itself from all impedimenta. It was easier to capture women by force than to bring them up from infancy, and thus the childhood of the world meant a state in which the child had little place, save as a small, fierce animal, whose development meant only a change from infancy and its helplessness to boyhood and its capacity for fight.

Deep pondering brought about for Aristotle a view which verges toward breadth and understanding, but is perpetually vitiated by the fact that he regards woman as in no sense an individual existence. If all goes well and prosperously, women deserve no credit; if ill, they may gain renown through their husbands, the philosopher remarking: "Neither would Alcestis have gained such renown, nor Penelope have been deemed worthy of such praise, had they respectively lived with their husbands in prosperous circumstances; and it is the sufferings of Admetus and Ulysses which have given them everlasting fame."

"There is no fairer thing
Than when the lord and lady with one soul
One home possess."

Thucydides, who had already expressed the opinion quoted by many a modern Philistine,—"The wife who deserves the highest praise is she of whom one hears neither good nor evil outside her own house,"—anticipates a later verdict, in words that might have been the foundation of Iphigenia's lament:—

"Woman is more evil than the storm-tossed waves, than the heat of fire, than the fall of the wild cataract! If it was a god who created woman, wherever he may be, let him know that he is the unhappy author of the greatest ills."

This was a summary of the Greek view as a whole. Sparta trained her girls and boys alike in childhood; but the theories of Lycurgus, admirable at some points, were brutal and short-sighted at others, and Sparta demonstrated that the extinction of all desire for beauty or ease or culture brings with it as disastrous results as its extreme opposite.

That liberty could be their right appears to have been not even suspected. Yet out from these dumb masses of humanity, regarded less than brutes, toiling naked under summer sun or in winter cold, chained in mines, men and women alike, and when the whim came, massacred in troops, sounded at intervals a voice demanding the liberty denied. It was quickly stifled. The record is there for all to read; stifled again and again, from Drimakos the Chian slave to Spartacus at Rome, yet each protest from this unknown army of martyrs was one step onward toward the emancipation to come. In each revolution, however small, two parties confronted each other,—the people who wished to live by the labor of others, the people who wished to live by their own labor,—the former denying in word and deed the claim of the latter.

Few more significant words or words more teeming with importance on the actual economic condition of women have ever been written than those of the great jurist whose name counts as almost final authority. "Ancient law," he writes, "subordinates the woman to her blood relations, while a prime phenomenon of modern jurisprudence has been her subordination to her husband." Under the modified laws as to marriage, he goes on to state, there came a time "when the situation of the Roman female, unmarried or married, became one of great personal and proprietary independence; for the tendency of the later law, as already hinted, was to reduce the power of the guardian to a nullity, while the form of marriage in fashion conferred on the husband no compensating superiority."

This has a rosier aspect than facts warrant. For the Germans, as for other barbarians of that epoch, the patriarchal family was the social order, and the head of the family the lord of the community. Wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law were excluded from leadership, though in spite of this there is record of a woman as being occasionally at the head of a tribe,—a circumstance chronicled by Tacitus with much disgust.

Tertullian waxes furious over the thought of a woman learning much, and still more, venturing to use such acquirement; but heretical Christians insisted that the respect which Romans had paid to the Vestal Virgin was her right, and each founder of a new sect had some woman as helper. But as a rule, her highest post during the first three centuries of Christianity was that of doorkeeper or message-woman, her economic dependence upon man being absolute. Social problems remained chiefly untouched. No objection was made to the existence of slavery. In this gospel of love the Christian slave became the brother of all, and kindliness was his right; but their faith demanded contentment with all present ills, since a glorious future was to compensate them. A Christian slave-woman was the property of her master, who had absolute power over her; but no objection seems to have been made to this.

"Do you not know that each one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age; the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die."

Clement of Alexandria supplemented this verdict with one as bitter, and Cyprian and the rest echoed the general anathema. As marriage grew thus more and more degraded, the number of the women in the world steadily increased, and posterity in like ratio deteriorated. The summary of Principal Donaldson, in the article already referred to, is the keynote to the whole situation.

Sir Henry Maine comes to the same conclusion, and deplores the fact of the loss of liberty for women, adding: "The prevalent state of religious sentiment may explain why it is that modern jurisprudence, forged in the furnace of barbarian conquest, and formed by the fusion of Roman jurisprudence with patriarchal usage, has absorbed among its rudiments much more than usual of those rules concerning the position of women which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization." And he adds words which come from a man who is a good Christian as well as a profound student: "No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman law."

The number of women far exceeded that of men, who died not only from constant feuds and struggles, but from many pestilences, which naturally, in a day when sanitary laws were unknown, ravaged the country. Dr. Karl Bücher, commenting on the relation of this fact to the life of women at that time, notes that from 1336 to 1400 thirty-two years of plague occurred, forty-two between 1400 and 1500, and thirty between 1500 and 1600. In addition to the convents, which received the well-to-do, many towns established Bettina institutions, houses of God, where destitute women were cared for; but it was impossible for all who sought admittance to be provided for.

The towns banded together for protection of life and industry, and thus developed the guild of the Middle Ages. Relieved from the fear of free-booting barons, no less dangerous than the hordes of organized robbers, these guilds grew populous and powerful. Licentiousness did not, however, lessen. Luther thundered against it, before his own revolt came; and the Reformation demanded marriage as the right and privilege of a people falsely taught its debasing and unholy nature.

Looking at the time as a whole, one sees clearly how old distinctions had become obliterated. Wealth found new definitions. The Church had made poverty the highest state, and insisted, as she does in part to-day, that the suffering and deprivation of one class were ordained of God to draw out the sympathies of the other. The rich must save their souls by alms and endowments, and contentment and acquiescence were to be the virtues of the poor.

Twelve hundred years of struggle toward some sort of justice seemed likely at this point to be lost, for with the opening of the thirteenth century each and all of the guilds proceeded to expel every woman in the trades. It is a curious fact in the story of all societies approaching dissolution, that its defenders adopt the very means best adapted to hasten this end. Each corporation dreaded an increase of numbers, and restricted marriages, and reduced the number of independent citizens. Many towns placed themselves voluntarily under the rule of princes who in turn were trying to subjugate the nobility, and so protected the towns and accorded all sorts of rights and privileges.

In spite of this, certain trades were practically woman's. Embroidery of church vestments and hangings had been brought to the highest perfection. Lace-making had been known from the most ancient times; and Colbert, the famous financier and minister for Louis XIV., gave a privilege to Madame Gilbert, of Alençon, to introduce into France the manufacture of both Flemish and Venetian Point, and placed in her hands for the first expenses 150,000 francs. The manufacture spread over every country of Europe, though in 1640 the Parliament of Toulouse sought to drive out women from the employment, on the plea that the domestic were her only legitimate occupations. A monk came to the rescue, and demonstrated that spinning, weaving, and all forms of preparing and decorating stuffs had been hers from the beginning of time, and thus for a season averted further action.

Apprenticeship for both male and female was finally well established, and many women became the successful heads of prosperous industries. The wage was, as it is to-day, the merest pittance; but any wage whatever was an advance upon the conditions of earlier servitude.

How was it possible that a condition as joyless and fruitless as this should be the accepted ideal of womanhood? Already the question is answered. For ages her identity had been merged in that of the man by whose side she worked with no thought of recompense. She toiled early and late, filling the office of general helper on the same terms; and even to-day, under our own eyes, the wife of many a farmer goes through her married life often not touching five dollars in cash in an entire year.

During the Middle Ages, and indeed well into the nineteenth century, possession of property by women was confined to the unmarried, the entire control and practical ownership passing to the husband upon marriage.

EMPLOYMENTS FOR WOMEN DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACTORY.

For nearly a century and a half, dating from the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, the condition of laboring women was that of the same class in all struggling colonies. There were practically no women wage-earners, save in domestic service, where a home and from thirty to a hundred dollars a year was accounted wealth, the latter sum being given in a few instances to the housekeepers in great houses. Each family represented a commonwealth, and its women gave every energy to the crowding duties of a daily life filled with manifold occupations.

"The Court did herupon order and decree that in every towne the chosen men are to take care of such as are sett to keep cattle, that they may be sett to some other employment withall, as spinning upon the rock, knitting and weaving tape, &c."

Within four years another Rhode Island family of Newport are recorded in 1768 as having "manufactured nine hundred and eighty yards of woolen cloth, besides two coverlids (coverlets), and two bed-ticks, and all the stocking yarn of the family."

The manufacture of straw goods, amounting now to many million dollars yearly, owes its origin to a woman,—Miss Betsey Metcalf, who in 1789, when hardly more than a child, discovered the secret of bleaching and braiding the meadow grass of Dedham, her native town. Others were taught, and a regular business of supplying the want for summer hats and bonnets was organized, and has grown to its present large proportions.

It is with the birth of the cotton industry that the work and wages of women begin to take coherent shape; and the history of the new occupation divides itself roughly into three periods. The first includes the ten or fifteen years prior to 1790, and may be called the experimental period; the second covers the time from 1790 to 1811, in which the spinning-system was established and perfected; and the third the years immediately following 1814, in which came the introduction of the power loom and the growth of the modern factory system.

Till the building of the great mill at Waltham, Mass., in which every form of the improved machinery found place, spinning was the only work of the factories. All the yarn was sent out among the farmers to be woven into cloth, the current prices paid for this being from six to twelve cents a yard. American cotton was poor, and the product of a quality inferior to the coarsest and heaviest-unbleached of to-day; but experiment soon altered all this.

Even at this stage England was determined that America should have neither machinery nor tools, and still held to the act passed in 1789 which enforced a penalty of five hundred pounds for any one who exported, or tried to export, "blocks, plates, engines, tools, or utensils used in or which are proper for the preparing or finishing of the calico, cotton, muslin, or linen printing manufacture, or any part thereof."

Thus far all had been tentative; but the building in 1790 at Pawtucket, R.I., of the first large factory with improved machinery gave the industry permanent place. Another mill was erected in the same State in 1795, and two more in Massachusetts in 1802 and 1803. In the three succeeding years ten more were built in Rhode Island and one in Connecticut, altogether fifteen in number, working about 8,000 spindles and producing in a year some 300,000 pounds of yarn. At the end of the year 1809 eighty-seven additional mills had been put up, making about 80,000 spindles in operation. Eight hundred spindles employed forty persons,—five men and thirty-five women and children.

For these women spinning was the only work. Hand-looms still did all the weaving, nor was it possible to obtain any plan of the power looms,—then in use in England, and a recent invention. Another mill had been built in 1795; and thus the first definite and profitable occupation for women in this country dates back to the close of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century, the history of its phases having been written by Tench Coxe. The village tailoress had long gone from house to house, earning in the beginning but a shilling a day, and this sometimes paid in kind; and in towns a dressmaker or milliner was secure of a livelihood. But work for the many was unknown outside of household life; and thus wage rates vary with locality, and are in most cases inferential rather than matter of record.

The early stages of the industry employed very few women, the processes involving too heavy labor; and out of 159 workers in the first mills, only eight were women, these being employed in carding and fulling. According to our last census, 10,743 are employed in New England mills alone; but the proportion remains far below that of the cotton-mills, and at many points in the South and remote territories it is still a household industry in which all share.

EARLY ASPECTS OF FACTORY LABOR FOR WOMEN.

Lack not only of machinery but of any facilities for its manufacture hampered and delayed the progress of the factory movement in the United States; but these difficulties were at last overcome, and in 1813 Waltham, Mass., saw what is probably the first factory in the world that combined under one roof every process for converting raw cotton into finished cloth.

The life of the Lowell factory-girls has full record in the little magazine called the "Lowell Offering," published by them for many years. Lucy Larcom has also lately given her "Recollections," one of the most valuable and characteristic pictures of the life from year to year, and it tallies with the summary made by Dickens in his "American Notes." Beginning as a child of eleven, whose business was simply to change bobbins, she received a wage of one dollar a week, with one dollar and a quarter for board, the allowance made by most of the corporations while the system of boarding-houses in connection with the factories lasted. The oldest corporation, known as the Merrimack, introduced this system, and for many years retained oversight of all in its employ. With increasing competition and the increase of the foreign element, alteration of methods began, and Lowell lost its characteristic features.

The agricultural class then outranked merchants and mechanics. There were no class distinctions, and the workers shared in the best social life of Lowell. The factory was an episode rather than a career; and the buildings themselves were kept as clean as the nature of the work admitted, growing plants filling the windows; and the swift-flowing Merrimac turning the wheels.

In most of the New England factories, the operatives were taxed for the support of religion. The Lowell Company dismissed them if often absent from church, and their lives without and within the factory were regulated as minutely as if in the cloister. Women and children were urged on by the cowhide; and the first inspection of the factories, notably in Connecticut, revealed a state of things hardly less harrowing than that which had brought about the passage of the first Factory Acts in England. At the same time wages were very inadequate. In twelve hours' daily labor the weavers of Baltimore were able to earn from sixty to seventy cents a day, the wage of the women being half or a third this amount; and they declared it not enough to pay the expenses of schooling for the children.

The most formidable and trustworthy arraignment of these conditions is to be found in a pamphlet printed in 1834, the full title of which is as follows: "An Address to the Working-men of New England, on the State of Education, and on the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and America."

By 1835 chiefly the poorer order of workers filled the mills, but even skilled labor made constant complaint of cruelties and injustices. Not only were there distressing cases of cruelty to children, but outrage of every kind had been found to exist among the women workers, whose wage had been lowered till nearly at the point known to-day as the subsistence point. Parents then, as now, gave false returns of age, and caught greedily at the prospect of any earning by their children; and any specific enactments as to schooling, etc., were still delayed.

"These evils," they said, "arise from the moral obliquity of the fastidious, and the cupidity of the avaricious. They consist in an illiberal opinion of the worth and rights of the laboring classes, an unjust estimation of their moral, physical, and intellectual powers, and unwise misapprehension of the effects which would result from the cultivation of their minds and the improvement of their condition, and an avaricious propensity to avail of their laborious services, at the lowest possible rate of wages for which they can be induced to work."

For this country such provisions were long delayed, nor have we even now the necessary regulations as to the protection of machinery. In the early days, though many mills were built by men who sought honestly to provide their employees with as many alleviations as the nature of the work admitted, many more were absolutely blind to anything but their own interest. With the disabilities resulting we are to deal at another point. It is sufficient to say here, that the struggle for factory-workers became more and more severe, and has remained so to the present day.

In judging the factory system as a whole, it is necessary to glance at the conditions of home work preceding it. These are given in full detail in historical and economical treatises, notably in Lecky's "History of the Eighteenth Century," and in Dr. Kay's "Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes." A list of the more important authorities on the subject will be found in the general bibliography at the end.

These conditions are often reproduced in part even to-day in buildings not adapted to their present use; but as a whole it is certain that the homes of factory-workers are cleaner, that regulation has proved beneficial, that light and air are furnished in better measure, and that overcrowding has become impossible. This applies only to textile manufactures, where machines must have room.

In an admirable chapter on the "Factory System," prepared by Colonel Carroll D. Wright for the Tenth Census of the United States, he takes up in detail the objections urged against it. These are as follows:—

Under "A" there is small defence to be made. The employment of married women is fruitful of evil, and the proportion of these in Massachusetts is 23.8 per cent. Wherever this per cent is high, infant mortality is very great, being 23.5 per cent for Massachusetts and 19 per cent for Connecticut and New Hampshire. The "Labor Bureau Reports" for New Jersey treat the subject in detail, and are strongly opposed to the employment of mothers of young children outside the home; and the conclusion is the same at other points.

The homes of operatives have steadily improved in character; and wherever there is an intelligent class of operatives, regulations are obeyed, and sanitary conditions are fair and often perfect, while the tendency is toward more and more care in every respect. Operatives' homes are often better guarded against sanitary evils than those of farmers or the ordinary laborer.

Under "C" it is shown conclusively that the factory has diminished intemperance,—Reybaud's "History of the Factory Movement" giving full statistics on this point, as well as in regard to the growth of banks and benefit societies. The standard of living is higher here, but there are countless evidences of thrift and a general rise in condition.

RISE AND GROWTH OF TRADES UP TO THE PRESENT TIME.

Defeat and discouragement attend well-nigh every step of the attempt to reach any conclusions regarding women workers in the early years of the century. It is true that 1832 witnessed an attempt at an investigation into their status, but the results were of slight value, actual figures being almost unattainable. The census of 1840 gave more, and that of 1850 showed still larger gain. In that of 1840 the number of women and children in the silk industry was taken; but while the same is true of the later one, there is apparently no record of them in any printed form. The New York State Census for the years 1845 and 1855 gave some space to the work of women and children, but there is nothing of marked value till another decade had passed.

To comprehend the blankness of this period in all matters relating to social and economic questions, it is necessary to recall the fact that no such needs as those of the mother country pressed upon us. To those who looked below the surface and watched the growing tide of emigration, it was plain that they were, in no distant day, to arise; but for the most part, even for those compelled to severest toil, it was taken for granted that full support was a certainty, and that the men or women who did not earn a comfortable living could blame no one but themselves.

It is impossible for the present, with its full freedom of opportunity, to realize, or credit even, the difficulties of the past, or even of a period hardly more than a generation ago. It was of this time that Dr. Emily Blackwell, one of the pioneers in higher work for women, wrote:—

"Women were hindered at every turn by endless restraint in endless minor detail of habit, custom, tradition, etc.... Most women who have been engaged in any new departure would testify that the difficulties of the undertaking lay far more in these artificial hindrances and burdens than in their own health, or in the nature of the work itself."

As in every other trade, processes have divided and subdivided. Sewing-machines did away with the tedious binding by hand, which had its compensations, however, in the fact that it was done at home. There is only incidental record of the numbers employed in this industry till the later census returns; but the percentage outside of Massachusetts remained a very small one, as even in Maine the total number given in the Report of the Bureau of Labor for 1887 is but 533, an almost inappreciable per cent of the population. The returns of the census of 1880 give the total number of women in this employment as 21,000, the proportion still remaining largest for New England.

The returns gave the number of women employed in various branches of manufacture as two hundred and eighty-five thousand, but stated that the figures were approximate merely, it being impossible to secure full returns. It was found that three and a half per cent of the population of Massachusetts were in the factories, and nearly the same proportion in Connecticut and Rhode Island; but details were of the most meagre description, and conclusions based upon them were likely to err at every point. Its value was chiefly educative, since the failure it represents pointed to a change in methods, and more preparation than had at any time been considered necessary in the officials who had the matter in charge.

In the first period of age, females pursuing gainful occupations are to males as one to three; in the second, one to six; and in the third, one to twelve. The actual increase over the numbers given in the census for 1860 is 1,551,288. The reasons for this almost incredible variation have already been suggested; and their operation became even stronger in the interval between that of 1870 and 1880. By this time methods were far more skilful and returns more minute, and thus the figures are to be accepted with more confidence than was possible with the earlier ones. The factory system, extending into almost every trade, brought about more and more differentiation of occupations, some two hundred of which were by 1880 open to women.

Even for this record numbers must be added, since many women work at home and make no return of the trade they have chosen, while many others are held by pride from admitting that they work at all. But the addition of a hundred thousand for the entire country would undoubtedly cover this discrepancy in full; nor are these numbers too large, though it is impossible to more than approximate them.

LABOR BUREAUS AND THEIR WORK IN RELATION TO WOMEN.

The difficulties encountered by the enumerators of the United States Census, and the growing conviction that much more minute and organized effort must be given if the real status of women workers was to be obtained, had already been matter of grave discussion. The labor question pressed upon all who looked below the surface of affairs; and very shortly after the census of 1860 a proposition was made in Boston to establish there a formal bureau of labor, whose business should be to fill in all the blanks that in the general work were passed over.

Naturally, then, the volume touched upon many abuses,—children in factories, and the factory system as a whole; the homes of workers, and their needs in sanitary and other directions; and toward the end a few pages of special comment on the hard lives of working-women as a whole.

Six divisions had been found essential to the thorough handling of the subject; and these divisions have formed the basis of all work since done in the same lines, whether in State bureaus or in that of the United States, soon to find mention here. It was under the direction of Colonel Carroll D. Wright that the Massachusetts Bureau did its careful and scientific work; and he represents the most valuable labor in this direction that the country has had, deserving to rank in this matter, as Tench Coxe still does in the manufacturing system, as the "Father" of the labor-bureau system.

The six divisions settled upon as essential to any general system of reports were as follows:—

1. Social Condition.
2. Occupations, Places in which Employed.
3. Hours of Labor, Time Lost, etc.
4. Physical and Sanitary Condition.
5. Economic Condition.
6. Moral Condition.

The results reached in this report may be regarded as a summary, not only of conditions for Boston, but for all the large manufacturing towns of New England, later inquiry justifying this conclusion.

But 22 per cent were allowed any vacation, and but 3.9 per cent received pay during that time, the average vacation being 1.87 weeks. A little over 26 per cent worked the full year without loss of time, while an average of 12.32 weeks was lost by 73 per cent. The average time worked by all during the year was 42.95 weeks. In personal service 26.5 per cent worked more than ten hours a day; in trade, 19.5 per cent were so employed, and in manufactures 5.6 per cent. In all occupations 8.9 per cent worked more than ten hours a day, and 8.6 per cent more than sixty hours a week.

In the matter of health 76.2 per cent of the whole number employed were in good health.

The average yearly income from all sources was $269.70, and the average yearly expenses for positive needs $261.30, leaving but $7.77, on the average, as a margin for books, amusements, etc. Those making savings are 11 per cent of the whole, their average savings being $72.15 per year. A few run in debt, the average debt being $36.60 for the less than 3 per cent incurring debt.

Of the total average yearly expenses, these percentages being based upon the law laid down by Dr. Engels of Prussia, as to percentage of expenses belonging to subsistence, 63 per cent must be expended for food and lodging, and 25 per cent for clothing,—a total of 88 per cent of total expenses for subsistence and clothing, leaving but 12 per cent of total expense to be distributed to the other needs of living.

Mr. Peck brought to the work much the same order of interest that had marked that of Colonel Wright, and wrote in his introduction to the report the summary of the situation for New York City:—

"By reason of its immense population, its numerous and extensive manufactures, its wealth, its poverty, and general cosmopolitan character, New York City presents a field for investigation into the subject of 'Working-Women, their Trades, Wages, Home and Social Conditions,' unequalled by any other centre of population in America. It opens up a wider and more diversified field for inquiry, study, and classification of the various industries in which women seek employment, than can be found even in European cities, with but few if any exceptions. It is for such reasons that the inquiry of the bureau into this special subject has been largely confined to the city named."

The Bureau of Labor for Connecticut sent out its first report in the same year (1885), and included investigations and statistics in the same lines, though, for reasons specified, in much more limited degree. That for 1886 for the same State took up in detail some points in regard to the work of both women and children, which, for want of both time and space, had been omitted in the first, their returns coinciding in all important particulars with those of the other bureaus.

Mr. Tobin, for California, and Mr. Hutchins, for Iowa, seemed moved at the same time in much the same way,—the Iowa report for 1887 treating the many questions involved with that largeness which has thus far distinguished work in this direction. Kansas, in the report for 1888, gave general conditions, women being treated incidentally; and Minnesota, in the report for the years 1887 and 1888, gave a chapter on working-women, wages, etc.

Maine, in the report for 1888, took up many questions of general interest, with their incidental bearings on the work of women; and in 1889 came another report from Kansas, in which the labor commissioner, Mr. Frank Betton, gave large space to an investigation conducted under many difficulties, but covering the ground very fully. A very full report from Michigan, under Commissioner Henry A. Robinson, was issued in 1892, nearly two hundred pages being given to an exhaustive examination into the conditions of women wage-earners in the State, its methods owing much to the work which had preceded it.

All that long experience had demonstrated as most important in such work was brought to bear. The investigation covered manual labor in cities, excluding textile industries, save incidentally as these had already been treated, as well as domestic service. Textile factories are usually outside of large cities, and it was the object to discover the opportunities of employment in the way of manual labor in cities themselves.

It is this report which forms the summary of all the work that has preceded it, and that gives the truest exponent of all present conditions. It is only necessary to add to it the summaries of the State reports at other points, to see the aspect of the question as a whole; and thus we are ready to consider by its aid the general rates of wages and of the status of the trades of every nature in which women are now engaged.

PRESENT WAGE-RATES IN THE UNITED STATES.

Under this heading it is proposed to include, not only the trades just specified as coming under the investigations recorded in "Working-Women in Large Cities," but also such data as can be gleaned from all the labor reports which have given any attention to this phase of the labor question. Naturally, then, we turn to the report of the Massachusetts Bureau for 1881, the first statement of these points, and compare it with the results obtained in the last report from Washington, as well as with the returns from the various States where investigation of the question has been made.

A distinction must at once be made in the definition of earnings. In speaking of them, there are necessarily three designations,—wages, earnings, and income. Wages represent the actual pay per week at the time employed, with no reference to the number of weeks' employment during the year. Earnings are the total receipts for any year from wages. Thus, for example, a girl is paid $5 a week wages, and works forty weeks of her year. Her earnings would then be for the year $200, though her wages of $5 per week would indicate that she earned $260 a year; while in fact her average weekly earnings would be for the whole year $3.84. Income is her total receipts for the year from all sources: wages, extra work, help from friends or from investments; in fact, any receipts from which expenses can be paid.

The divisions of occupations are the same as those of the tenth census, and the tables are made on the same system. To determine the general conditions for the twenty thousand at work, it was necessary to have accurate detail as to one thousand; and, in fact, 1,032 were interviewed. Directly after the work in this direction had ended, and before the report was ready for publication, a general reduction of ten per cent in wages took place, and this must be kept in mind in dealing with the returns recorded. In this, recapitulation is given in full, and, as will be seen, includes all occupations open to women.

In the report for 1886, the lowest average wage is reported as found in the making of wearing apparel; but the average for the State was found to be a trifle over $6.50 per week.

Maine sent out its first annual report in 1887, and gives the wages of women workers as $3.58 for the lowest, and $15.20 for the highest, the annual earnings ranging from $104 to $520. The report from the same State for 1889 takes up the subject of working-women in detail, giving their home or boarding conditions, sanitary conditions, their own remarks on trades, wages, etc., and the aspect of their labor as a whole. The average wage remains the same.

Rhode Island, in its Third Annual Report for 1889, under the direction of Commissioner Almon K. Goodwin, gives the average wage for the State as $5.87, and devotes the bulk of its space to working-women, with full returns from the entire State.

Kansas, in its fifth annual report issued in 1889, gives a section to working-women. The commissioner, Mr. Frank Betton, considers the returns imperfect, great difficulty having been experienced in securing them. The average weekly wage is given as $5.17. Expenses are carefully analyzed, and there is a report of the remarks of employers, as well as from a number of those employed.

In the report from Iowa for 1887, Commissioner Hutchins laments that so few women have been willing to fill out blanks of returns. The wage returns given range from $3.75 to $9. The report for 1889 makes mention of continued difficulties in securing returns, and gives the annual earnings of women as from $100 to $440. The tables include cost of living and many other essential particulars.

Minnesota, whose first report, under the supervision of Commissioner John Lamb, appeared in 1888 for the years 1887 and 1888, found little or no room for statistics, but included a chapter on working-women, with a few admirable tables of age, nativity, home and working conditions, etc. Minute inquiry was made as to cost of living, clothing, etc.; and the results form a chapter of painful interest, that on domestic service being equally suggestive. Clothing, as usual, represents the lowest average wage, $3.66 per week, the highest being $8.50, and the general average a trifle over $6.

We come now to the most elaborate and far-reaching inquiry yet made,—the work of the United States Bureau of Labor under Commissioner Wright, entitled "Working-Women in Large Cities." Twenty-two of these are reported upon after one of the most rigorous examinations ever undertaken; and the average wage of each tallies with the rates given in the States to which they belong. Taken alphabetically, the list is as follows:—

AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS, BY CITIES.

Artificial flowers, $277.53; awnings and tents, $276.46; bookbinding, $271.31; boots and shoes, $286.60; candy, $213.59; carpets, $298.53; cigar boxes, $267.36; cigar factory, $294.66; cigarette factory, $266.12; cloak factory, $291.76; clothing factory, $248.36; cotton-mills, $228.32; dressmaking, $278.37; dry-goods stores, $368.84; jewelry factory, $263.80; men's furnishing-goods factory, $232.24; millinery, $345.95; paper-box factory, $240.47; plug-tobacco factory, $235.67; printing-office, $300; skirt factory, $265.40; smoking-tobacco factory, $238.70.

These, so far as they have been collected and tabulated by the various labor bureaus, are the returns for the United States as a whole. The reports for the following years of 1891 and 1892 were expected to be far more general, but this has not proved to be the case.

GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR ENGLISH WORKERS.

In 1861 these returns gave for England and Wales 1,024,277 women at work. Twenty years later the number had doubled, half a million being found in London alone. This does not include all, since, as Mr. Charles Booth notes in his recent "Labor and Life of the People," many employed women do not return their employments.

Mr. Booth's work is a purely private enterprise, assisted by devoted co-workers, and by trained experts employed at his own expense. For the final estimate must be added general census returns, and the recent reports on the sweating-system in London and other English cities.

As to the direct effects of factory or out-door labor on pregnant mothers, out of 10,000 births among factory mothers, there died from 1863-75 of children under one year of age, in Portsmouth 1,459, Liverpool 2,189, London 1,591, and other towns with textile industries 1,940. Statistics taken in Germany and at other points all went to show that in the matter of out-door labor at the harvest season, when all women-workers are in the fields, the deaths of nursing infants were three times as great as in the other nine months.

The Factory and Workshop Act came as partial solution to the many problems; and though regarded by the working-class as a mass of arbitrary restrictions whose usefulness they denied and in whose benefits they had no faith, it has actually proved the Great Charter of the working-classes. There are points still to be altered,—modifications made necessary by the constant change in methods of production, as well as in the enlarging sense of the ethical principles involved. But our own legislation is still far behind it at many points, and its work is done efficiently and thoroughly. Laws had been made, one by one, fifteen standing on the Statute Books in 1878, when all were abrogated, their essential features being codified in the Act as it stands to-day,—a genuine industrial code in one hundred and seven sections.

It was during this season of repose that the public mind received first one shock and then another. "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London" appalled all who read; and leaf by leaf the new book of revelations disclosed always deeper depths of misery and want among all workers with the needle,—from the days of the fig-leaf the symbol of grinding toil and often hopeless misery.

In such conditions inspection is inoperative. An army of inspectors would not suffice where every house represents from one to a dozen workshops under its roof, in each of which sanitary conditions are defied, and the working day made more often fourteen and sixteen hours than twelve. Even for this day a starvation wage is the rule; the sewing-machine operative, for example, while earning a wage of fifteen or eighteen pence, furnishing her own thread and being forced to pay rental on the machine.

A portion of a wage table is given here as illustrative of rates, and used as a reference table before the preparation of Mr. Booth's book, which gives much the same figures:—

Outside of the cities, where the needle is almost the sole refuge of the unskilled worker, every industry is invaded. A recent report as to English nail and chain workers shows hours and general conditions to be almost intolerable, while the wage averages eightpence a day. In the mines, despite steady action concerning them, women are working by hundreds for the same rate. In short, from every quarter comes in repeated testimony that the majority of working Englishwomen are struggling for a livelihood; that a pound a week is a fortune, and that the majority live on a wage below subsistence point.

"We express the firm hope that the faithful exposure of the evils that we have been called upon to unveil, will have the effect of leading capitalists to lend greater attention to the conditions under which work is done, which furnishes the merchandise they demand. When legislation has attained the limit beyond which it can no longer be useful, the amelioration of the condition of workers can result only from the increasing moral sense of those who employ them."

In Wales, as in the North of England, women and children are employed in the mines, and there is constant evasion of the laws regulating hours, with a wage as inadequate as the work is heavy. Heavy woollens and corduroy employ a small proportion in their manufacture, wage and hours being the same as those of England.

GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR CONTINENTAL WORKERS.

Thus far there is no official report of the industries in which they are engaged, and figures must be drawn from unofficial sources. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the noted political economist, in his history of "The Labor of Women in the Nineteenth Century," computes the number of women at work in the manufactories of textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk, as nearly one million; and outside of this is the enormous number of lace-makers and general workers in all occupations. There are over a quarter of a million of these lace-workers, whose wages run from eighty and ninety centimes to two francs a day; and the rate of payment for Swiss lace-workers is the same.

Belgium, French in feeling and in methods, has known some of the worst abuses discoverable on continental soil, thousands of women and children in her mines having toiled from twelve to sixteen hours a day, with often no Sunday rest, for a wage at bare subsistence point. In "Germinal," Zola, who spent months observing every phase of their life, has given a picture, unsurpassed in any literature, of the misery and degradation of the worker. An investigation in 1874, and indignation at some of the conditions then discovered, brought about modifications of the law. That of the general congress of 1891 accomplished much more; but work must still be done before any very marked advance becomes discernible.

The census of 1882 gave for Germany, in a population of 45,222,113 persons, 23,071,364 women, of whom 1,109,530 were widows, and 5,467,730 unmarried, a large proportion of both these classes being self-supporting. An immense number of these were agricultural laborers. In Prussia in 1867 the census gave the number of women agricultural laborers as 1,054,213. Woman's wage for a day's labor, always twelve and often fourteen hours, is from twenty to twenty-five cents, about a third of that received by men doing the same work. Brassey, the great railroad contractor, found throughout Germany that her wage was always a third and often a quarter less than that of men.

As to the present laws concerning the length of the working-day, a general abstract is found in a return issued in reply to an address from the House of Commons, an abstract of which was given in "St. James' Gazette":—

GENERAL CONDITIONS AMONG WAGE-EARNING WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES.

The summary already made of the work of bureaus of labor and their bearing upon women wage-earners includes some points belonging under this head which it still seemed advisable to leave where they stand. The work of the Massachusetts Bureau gave the keynote, followed by all successors, and thus required full outlining; and it is from that, as well as successors, that general conditions are to be determined. A brief summary of such facts as each State has investigated and reported upon will be given, with the final showing of the latest and most general report,—that from the United States Bureau of Labor for 1889.

Taking the State as a whole, though the average wage is nearly a dollar less a week than that of Massachusetts, its buying power is somewhat more, from the fact that rents are lower and the conditions of living simpler, though this is true only of remote towns.

"Homes" of every order have been established in Boston and in other large towns in the State; and as they give board at the lowest rate, they are filled with girls. They are rigid as to rules and regulations, and not in favor, as a rule, with the majority. A very slight relaxing of lines and more effort to make them cheerful would result in bringing many who now remain outside; but in any case they can reach but a small proportion.

In unskilled labor there is little difference among the workers. All alike are half starved, half clothed, overworked to a frightful degree; the report specifying numbers whose day's work runs from fourteen to sixteen hours, and with neither time to learn some better method of earning a living, nor hope enough to spur them on in any new path. This class is found chiefly among sewing-women on cheap clothing, bags, etc.; and there is no present means of reaching them or altering the conditions which surround them.

In New York City, while there is a large proportion of successful workers, there is an enormous mass of the lowest order. No other city offers so varied a range of employment, and there is none where so large a number are found earning a wage far below the "life limit."

GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE WESTERN STATES.

The reports from Kansas and Wisconsin give a wage but slightly above that of New Jersey, the weekly average being $5.27. Of the 50,000 women at work in 1889,—the number having now nearly doubled,—but 6,000 were engaged in manufacturing, the larger portion being in domestic service. Save in one or two of the larger towns and cities, there is no overcrowding, and few of the conditions that go with a denser population and sharper competition. Kansas gives large space to general conditions, and, while urging better pay, finds that her working-women are, as a whole, honest, self-respecting, moral members of the community. Factory workers are few in proportion to those in other occupations; and this is true of most of the Western States, where general industries are found rather than manufactures.

"In one of the large cities of Ohio the labor commissioners of that State discovered that shirts were being made for 36 cents a dozen; and that the rules of one establishment paying such wages employing a large number of females, required that the day's labor should commence and terminate with prayer and thanksgiving."

Prices are higher here than at almost any other portion of the United States, and thus the wage gives less return. In spite of the general impression that women fare well at this point, the report gives various details which seem to prove abuses of many orders. It made special investigation into the conditions of domestic service, that in hotels and large boarding-houses being found to be full of abuses, though conditions as a whole were favorable. In so new a State there are few manufacturing interests; and the factories investigated are many of them reported as showing an almost criminal disregard of the comfort and interests of the employees. Aside from this, the report indicates much the same general conditions as prevail in other States.

Wages are considered at length; and Commissioner Tobin states that the rate paid to women in California "does not compare favorably with the rates paid to women in the Eastern States, as do the wages of men, for the reason that Chinese come more into competition with women than with men. This is especially the case among seamstresses, and in nearly all our factories ... in other lines of labor the wages paid to females in this State are generally higher than elsewhere."

Rent, food, and clothing cost more in California than in the Eastern States. The wage-tables show that the tendency is to limit a woman's wage to a dollar a day, even in the best paid trades, and as much below this as labor can be obtained.

The remarks and suggestions of the women themselves are extraordinarily helpful. Outside the cities organization among them is unknown; but it is found that those trades which are organized furnish the best paid and most intelligent class of girls, who conceived at once the benefits of a labor bureau, and answered fully and promptly. The hours of work in all industries ranged from nine to ten, and the wage paid was found to be a little more than fifty per cent less than that of men engaged in the same work. A large proportion supported relatives, and general conditions as to living were of much the same order of comfort and discomfort as those given in other reports. The fact that this report is the latest on this subject, and more minute in detail than has before been possible, makes it invaluable to the student of social conditions; and it is entertaining reading, even for the average reader.

In the twenty-two cities investigated by the agents of this bureau, the average age at which girls began work was found to be 15 years and 4 months. Charleston, S.C., gives the highest average, it being there 18 years and 7 months, and Newark, N.J., the lowest,—14 years and 7 months. The average period in which all had been engaged in their present occupations is shown to be 4 years and 9 months; while of the total number interviewed, 9,540 were engaged in their first attempt to earn a living.

Concerning education, church attendance, home and shop conditions, 15,831 reported. Of these, 10,458 were educated in American public schools, and 5,375 in other schools; 5,854 attend Protestant churches; 7,769 the Catholic, and 367 the Hebrew. A very large percentage, comprehending 3,209, do not attend church at all.

This is the summary of conditions as a whole, and we pass now to the specific evils and abuses in trades and general industries.

SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTORY LIFE AND IN GENERAL TRADES.

This is one form; and side by side with it comes another, dealt with here and there, but as a rule ignored,—vapors as deadly as dust; vapors of muriatic acid from pickling tins; of choking chlorine from bleaching-rooms; of gas and phosphorus, which even now, where strongest preventives are used, still pull away both teeth and jaws from many a worker in match-factories; while acids used in cleaning, bleaching-powders, and many an industry where women and children chiefly are employed, eat into hands and clothing, and make each hour a torture.

For the United States there is a steadily lessening proportion of these evils, and we shall deal chiefly with those found in existence by the respective bureaus of labor at the time when their investigations were made. Private and public investigation made before their organization had brought to light in Connecticut, and at many points in New England, gross abuses both in child labor and that of woman and girl workers. It is sufficient, however, for our purpose to refer the reader to the mention of these contained in the first report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, as well as to Dr. Richard T. Ely's "History of the Labor Movement in America," and to pass at once to the facts contained in the fifteenth report from Massachusetts.

In the clothing-business, where the running of heavy sewing-machines is done by foot-power, there is a fruitful source of disease; and even where steam is used, the work is exhausting, and soon produces weakness and various difficulties.

In food preparations girls who clean and pack fish get blistered hands and fingers from the saltpetre employed by the fishermen. Others in "working-stalls" stand in cold water all day, and have the hands in cold water; and in laundries, confectionery establishments, etc., excessive heat and standing in steam make workers especially liable to throat and lung diseases, as well as those induced by continuous standing.

Straw goods produce a fine dust, and cause a constant hacking among the girls at work upon them; and the acids used in setting the colors often produce "acid sores" upon the ends of the fingers.

The question of seats for saleswomen comes up periodically, has been at some points legislated upon, and is in most stores ignored or evaded. "The girls look better,—more as if they were ready for work," is the word of one employer, who frankly admitted that he did not mean they should sit; and this is the opinion acted upon by most. Insufficient time for meals is a universal complaint; and nine times out of ten, the conveniences provided are insufficient for the numbers who must use them, and thus throw off offensive and dangerous effluvia.

One of the ablest factory-inspectors in this country, or indeed in any country, Mrs. Fanny B. Ames of Boston, reports this as one of the least regarded points in a large proportion of the factories and manufacturing establishments visited, but adds that it arises often from pure ignorance and carelessness, and is remedied as soon as attention is called to it.

The Factory Inspection Law for the State of New York, in detail much the same as that of Massachusetts, is sufficiently full and explicit to secure to all workers better conditions than any as yet attained save in isolated cases. There is, however, constant violation of its most vital points; and this must remain true for all States, until the number of inspectors is made in some degree adequate to the demand. At present they are not only seriously overworked, but find it impossible to cover the required ground. The law which stands at present as the demand to be made by all factory-workers and all interested in intelligent legislation, will be found in the Appendix.

As to wages, concerning which there seems to be a general opinion that steady rise has gone on, we find Dr. Daniel giving the rates for many years. She writes:—

These statements apply in great part to unskilled labor; but there is always in these houses a large proportion of skilled labor disabled by sickness or other causes and out of work for the time being. The wage at best for skilled labor is given by the Labor Commissioner as $5.29. Let any one study the possibilities of this sum per week, and the wonder will arise, not why living is not easier, but how it goes on at all.

In New York a "Working Woman's Protective Union," formed more than twenty-five years ago, has done unceasing work in settling disputed claims and collecting wages unjustly withheld. No case is entered on their books which has not been examined by their lawyer, and thus only well grounded complaints find record; but with even these precautions the records show nearly fifty thousand adjudicated since they began work. Many cities have special committees, in the organized charities, who seek to cover the same ground, but who find it impossible to do all that is required. From East and West alike, complaints are practically the same. It is not only women in trades, but those in domestic service, who are recorded as suffering every form of oppression and injustice. Colorado and California, Kansas and Wisconsin, speak the same word. With varying industries wrongs vary, but the general summary is the same.

On the side of the employers, and as bearing also on the evils which are most marked among women workers, we may quote from the Government Report, "Working Women in Large Cities":—

"Actual ill-treatment by employers seems to be infrequent.... Foreigners are often found to be more considerate of their help than native-born men, and the kindest proprietor in the world is a Jew of the better class. In some shops week-workers are locked out for the half-day if late, or docked for every minute of time lost, an extra fine being often added. Piece workers have great freedom as to hours, and employers complain much of tardiness and absenteeism. The mere existence of health and labor laws insures privileges formerly unheard of; half-holidays in summer, vacation with pay, and shorter hours are becoming every year more frequent, better workshops are constructed, and more comfortable accommodations are being furnished."

Numbers of children under age are employed for excessive hours, and at work far beyond their strength, an investigation having shown that over one hundred thousand children under the legal age of fourteen were at work in factories, workshops, and stores.

Service for a number of years often meets with no consideration, but is regarded as a reason for dismissal. It is the rule in some stores to keep no one over five years, lest they come to feel that they have some claim on the firm; and when a saleswoman is dismissed from one house, she finds it almost impossible to obtain employment in another.

The report concludes:—

"We find that, through low wages, long hours, unwholesome sanitary conditions, and the discouraging effect of excessive fines, not only is the physical condition injured, but the tendency is to injure the moral well-being. It is simply impossible for a woman to live without assistance on the low salary a saleswoman earns, without depriving herself of real necessities."

These were the conditions which, in 1889, led to the formation of the little society which, though limited in numbers, has done admirable and efficient work, its latest effort being to secure from the Assembly at Albany a bill making inspection of stores and shops as obligatory as that of factories.

There are eleven thousand factories in New York State, and only one inspector to investigate their condition; while in England, scarce larger in territory, forty-one inspectors are appointed by the Government.

The Andrus bill, adding to the power of factory inspectors, raising the working age of children to fourteen years, and prohibiting night work for girls under twenty-one and boys under eighteen, was sent with the Factory Bill to the Central Labor Union, and the women were largely instrumental in obtaining the passage of the measure.

Why such determined opposition still meets every attempt to bring about the same inspection for mercantile establishments cannot be determined; but thus far, though admitted to be necessary, the act has at each reading been laid upon the table. Another effort will be made in the coming winter of 1893-94.

"It is an open question whether woman's pay is not falling, cost and standards of living considered. Could partly supported labor and children be eliminated, shop employees would get higher rates. Still there are other economic anomalies that affect women's wages. 'Wholesalers' and manufacturers shut up their factories and 'give out' everything—umbrellas, coats, hair-wigs, and shrouds—to be made,—they know not in what den, or wrung they care not from what misery ... Again, wages are depressed by over-stimulating piece-work; and its unscrupulous use by proprietors who hesitate to confess to paying women only $3 or $4 a week, yet who scale prices so that only experts can earn that sum. Many employers cut rates as soon as, by desperate exertions, operatives clear $5 a week. Then, underbidding from the unemployed is a fruitful source of low wages. Massachusetts has 20 per cent of her workers unemployed."

These are the facts that are constantly urged upon the army of under-paid, half-starving needlewomen in our great cities, and no less upon another army of girls in shops and factories, who are implored to consider the advantages of domestic service and to give up their unnecessary battle with the limitations hedging in every other form of labor. Astonishment that the girls prefer the factory and shop is unending, nor is it regarded as possible that substantial reason may and must exist for such choice. As a means of arriving at some solution of the problem, some six hundred employees of every order were interviewed, under circumstances which made their replies perfectly free and full; and the results tallied exactly with others obtained by an inquiry in the Philadelphia Working-Woman's Guild, a society then representing seventy-two distinct occupations.

REMEDIES AND SUGGESTIONS.

The student of social problems who faces the misery of the lowest order of worker, and the sharp privation endured by many even of the better class, is apt, in the first fever of amazement and indignation, to feel that some instant force must be brought to bear, and justice secured, though the heavens fall. It is this sense of the struggle of humanity out of which have been born Utopias of every order, from the "Republic" of Plato to the dream in "Looking Backward." Not one of these can be spared; and that they exist and find a following larger and larger, is the surest evidence of the soul at the bottom of each. But for those who take the question as a whole, who see how slow has been the process of evolution, and how impossible it is to hasten one step of the unfolding that humankind is still to know, it is the ethical side that comes uppermost, and that first demands consideration.

Just pay, then, heads the list of remedies. The difficulty of fixing this is necessarily enormous, nor can it come at once; since education for not only the employer but the public as a whole is demanded. To bring this about is a slow process. It is a transition period in which we live. Material conditions born of phenomenal material progress have deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress; and the working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern. Twenty years ago M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu wrote of women wage-earners:—

Take the fact here stated, and add to it all that is implied in modern competitive conditions, and we see the true nature of the task that awaits us. To do away with this competition would not accomplish the end desired. To guide it and bring it into intelligent lines is part of the general education. Profit-sharing is an indispensable portion of the justice to be done; and this, too, implies education for both sides, and would go far toward lessening burdens. We cannot abolish the factory, but hours can be shortened; the labor of married women with young children forbidden, as well as that of children below a fixed age. Industrial education will prevent the possibility of another generation owning so many incompetent and untrained workers, and technical schools in general are already raising the standard and helping to secure the same end.

One cheering token of progress is the increased discussion as to methods of training and the necessity of organization among women themselves. Ten years ago only a voice here and there suggested the need of either. In 1885, at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Miss Sarah Harland, lecturer on Mathematics at Newnham College, insisted that educated gentlewomen must have larger opportunity for paying work. The three qualifications in all work she stated to be: (1) Organization on a large scale; (2) Permanency; (3) Giving returns that will enable the salaries paid to compete with those of teachers.

Six points are urged by the Working-Woman's Society of New York, all in the lines indicated here. Its purposes and aims, as given in the prospectus, are as follows:—

1. To encourage women in the various trades to protect their mutual interests by organization.

2. To use all possible means to enforce the existing laws relating to the protection of women and children in factories and shops, investigating all reported violations of such laws; also to promote, by all suitable means, further legislation in this direction.

3. To work for the abolition of tenement-house manufacture, especially in the cigar and clothing trades.

4. To investigate all reported cases of cruel treatment on the part of employers and their managers to their women and children employees, in withholding money due, in imposing fines, or in docking wages without sufficient reason.

5. To found a labor bureau for the purpose of facilitating the exchanging of labor between city and country, thus relieving the over-crowded occupations now filled by women.

6. To publish a journal in the interests of working-women.

7. To secure equal pay for both sexes for equal work.

I. To bring out of the chaos of competition the order of co-operation.

II. To organize all wages-earning women.

III. To disseminate the literature of labor and co-operation.

IV. To institute a label which shall enable the purchaser to discriminate in favor of goods produced under healthful conditions.

V. 1. Abolition of child labor to the age of sixteen.

2. Compulsory education to the age of sixteen.

3. Prohibition of employment of minors more than eight hours daily.

4. Prohibition of employment of minors at dangerous occupations.

5. Appointment of women inspectors, one for every thousand women and children employed.

6. Healthful conditions of work for women and children.

The foregoing to be obtained by legislation.

The following to be obtained by organization:—

1. Equal pay for equal work with men.

2. A minimal rate which will enable the least paid to live upon her earnings.

Two points still remain untouched, both of them vital elements in the just working of the social scheme,—profit-sharing, and a board of conciliation and arbitration for the adjustment of all difficulties between employer and employed.

The Nottingham lace manufacture, in which numbers of women and children as well as men are employed, has, for thirty years and more, been governed by a Board of Arbitration, the result being an end of strikes and all difficulties of like nature. If no more were accomplished than the bringing about a better understanding between employer and employed, it would mean much, since mutual suspicion and distrust rule for both. Organization among women, and the sense of mutual dependence given by it, lead naturally to the formation of a board able to judge dispassionately and disinterestedly of the questions naturally arising, many of which, however, are at once dissipated on the adoption of the system of profit-sharing.

1. Why are they in the field?

2. How does their work compare in efficiency with that of men?

3. What is likely to be the final effect on wage of their entrance into active life?

As to the final effect on wages, I regard the whole aspect of things as purely transitional, and must answer from personal conviction in the matter.

The lowering of wage may be considered, then, as in one sense remedial, and the present state of things as in part the mere action of inevitable and inescapable law. But it is impossible to make this plain in present limits. Having passed through every stage of feeling,—sick pity, burning indignation, and tempestuous desire for instant action,—I have come at last to regard all as our education in justice and a demand for training in such wise as shall render unskilled labor more and more impossible. So long as it exists, however, I see no outlook but the fluctuating and uncertain wage, the natural result of the existence of the lowest order of workers.

"Each man to himself and each woman to herself, such is the word of the past and the present, and the true word of immortality."

"No one can acquire for another, not one;

No one can grow for another, not one."

Despair might easily be the outcome of a first glance at these conditions; but the stir at all points is assurance of a better day to come.

A generation ago Mazzini wrote:—

"The human soul, not the body, should be the starting-point of all our efforts, since the body without the soul is only a carcass, whilst the soul, wherever it is found free and holy, is sure to mould for itself such a body as its wants and vocation require."

It is this soul-moulding that is given chiefly into the hands of women. It is through them that the higher ideal of life, its purpose and its demands, is to be made known. No present scheme of general philanthropy can touch this need. It is growth in the human soul itself that will mean justice from the employer to each and every worker, and from the worker in equal measure to the employer; and this justice can be implanted in the child as certainly as many another virtue, into the knowledge and love of which we grow but slowly.

and in knowing it, the first step is taken in the new life wherein all are brothers; and the law of love, slowly as it may work, ends forever the long conflict between employer and employed.

FACTORY INSPECTION LAW.

PASSED MAY 18, 1886; AMENDED MAY 25, 1887; AMENDED JUNE 15, 1889; AMENDED MAY 21, 1890; AMENDED MAY 18, 1892.

CHAPTER 409, LAWS OF 1886 (AS AMENDED BY CHAPTER 673, LAWS OF 1892).

An act to Regulate the Employment of Women and Children in Manufacturing Establishments, and to Provide for the Appointment of Inspectors to Enforce the Same.

The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

§ 4. It shall be the duty of the owner, agent, or lessee of any manufacturing establishment where there is any elevator, hoisting-shaft, or well-hole, to cause the same to be properly and substantially inclosed or secured, if in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, or of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector, unless disapproved by the Factory Inspector, it is necessary to protect the lives or limbs of those employed in such establishment. It shall also be the duty of the owner, agent, or lessee of each of such establishments to provide or cause to be provided, if, in the opinion of the Inspector, the safety of persons in or about the premises should require it, such proper trap or automatic doors, so fastened in or at all elevator ways as to form a substantial surface when closed, and so constructed as to open and close by action of the elevator in its passage, either ascending or descending, but the requirements of this section shall not apply to passenger elevators that are closed on all sides. The Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, and Deputy Factory Inspectors may inspect the cables, gearing, or other apparatus of elevators in manufacturing establishments, and require that the same be kept in a safe condition.

§ 7. It shall be the duty of the owner, agent, superintendent, or other person having charge of such manufacturing establishment, or of any floor or part thereof, to report in writing to the Factory Inspector all accidents or injury done to any person in such factory, within forty-eight hours of the time of the accident, stating as fully as possible the extent and cause of such injury, and the place where the injured person has been sent, with such other information relative thereto as may be required by the Factory Inspector. The Factory Inspector or Assistant Factory Inspector and Deputy Factory Inspectors under the supervision of the Factory Inspector, are hereby authorized and empowered to fully investigate the causes of such accidents, and to require such precautions to be taken as will in their judgment prevent the recurrence of similar accidents.

§ 10. Not less than sixty minutes shall be allowed for the noonday meal in any manufacturing establishment in this State. The Factory Inspector, the Assistant Factory Inspector, or any Deputy Factory Inspector shall have power to issue written permits in special cases, allowing shorter meal-time at noon, and such permit must be conspicuously posted in the main entrance of the establishment, and such permit may be revoked at any time the Factory Inspector deems necessary, and shall only be given where good cause can be shown.

§ 12. Any officer of the Factory Inspection Department, or other competent person designated for such purpose by the Factory Inspector, shall inspect any building used as a workshop or manufacturing establishment or anything attached thereto, located therein or connected therewith, outside of the cities of New York and Brooklyn, which has been represented to be unsafe or dangerous to life or limb. If it appears upon such inspection that the building or anything attached thereto, located therein or connected therewith is unsafe or dangerous to life or limb, the Factory Inspector shall order the same to be removed or rendered safe and secure; and if such notification be not complied with within a reasonable time, he shall prosecute whoever may be responsible for such delinquency.

§ 18. The words "manufacturing establishment," wherever used in this act, shall be construed to mean any mill, factory, or workshop, where one or more persons are employed at labor.

§ 19. A copy of this act shall be conspicuously posted and kept posted in each workroom of every manufacturing establishment in this State.

§ 20. Any person who violates or omits to comply with any of the provisions of this act, or who suffers or permits any child to be employed in violation of its provisions, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty nor more than fifty dollars for the first offence, and not more than one hundred dollars for the second offence, or imprisonment for not more than ten days, and for the third offence a fine of not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and not more than thirty days' imprisonment.

§ 21. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this act are hereby repealed.

§ 22. This act shall take effect immediately.

United States Census, from 1790 to 1880 inclusive.

Reports of the State Bureaus of Labor Statistics as follows:—

Maine, 1889.
Massachusetts, 1870 to 1889 inclusive.
Connecticut, 1881.
Rhode Island, 1889.
New York, 1885.
New Jersey, 1885, 1886, and 1889.
Iowa, 1887 and 1889.
Kansas, 1889.
Wisconsin, 1883-84 and 1887.
Colorado, 1889.
Minnesota, 1889.
California, 1888.
Nebraska, 1887-90.
Michigan, 1892.

Reports of the Factory Inspectors for various States.

Working Women in Large Cities: Report of the United States Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., 1889.

The Labor Movement in America. By Richard T. Ely. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York.

The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class. By Francis A. Walker. Henry Holt & Co., New York.

On Labor. By W.T. Thornton. Macmillan & Co., London, 1869.

Profit-Sharing between Employer and Employed. By N.P. Gilman. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., Boston.

Sharing the Profits. By Mary Whiton Calkins, A.M. Ginn & Co., Boston.

Artisans and Machinery. By P. Gaskell. London, 1836.

Condition of the Laboring Classes in England. By F. Engel. Leipzig and New York.

Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft aus dem geschicht. Standpunkte. By Wilhelm Roscher.

Various Reports of Commissioners appointed to inquire into the working of the Factory Acts in England.

Le Travail des Femmes au XIX. Siècle. By Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Paris, 1870.

London Labor and the London Poor. By Henry Mayhew. Charles Griffen & Co., London.

The Industrial Revolution. By Arnold Toynbee. London.

The Philosophy of Wealth. By John B. Clark. Ginn & Co., Boston.

Economic Writings of Emil de Lavelaye.

Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science.

Various Treatises on Political Economy. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Senior, Cairnes, Ely, Perry, Walker, etc.

Prisoners of Poverty. By Helen Campbell. Roberts Bros., Boston.

Applied Christianity. By Washington Gladden. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., Boston.

Life and Work of the Earl of Shaftesbury, London. Read for Factory Inspection and Legislation.

Social Studies. By the Rev. R. Heber Newton. G.P. Putnam's Son, New York.

Social Problems. By Henry George.

Studies in Modern Socialism. By Edwin Brown, D.D. Appleton & Co., New York.

Dynamic Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. D. Appleton & Co., New York.

Labor and Life of the People. Vols. 1 & 2: East London. By Charles Booth. Williams & Norgate, London, 1889 & 1892.

Thirty Years of Labor: 1859 to 1889. By T.V. Powderly.

Das Kapital. By Karl Marx.

How the Other Half Live. By Jacob Riis. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

General Reports and Review Articles on the questions involved.

GERMANY.

Ausser den amtlichen Veröffentlichungen der verschiedenen Länder, über Berufs-und Bevölkerungstatistik vgl G. Schmoller, Thatsachen der Arbeitsteilung, Jahrb. f. Ges. und Berw. Bd 13, 1889.

Buchsenschutz, Besitz und Erwerb in griechischen Alterthum. Halle, 1869.

Franz Bernhoft, Ueber die Stellung der Frauen in Alterthum, Nord und Süd. Bd. 39, 1884.

K. Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter, 2 Auflage. Wien, 1882.

Norrenberg, Frauenarbeit und Arbeiterinnenziehung in deutscher Vorzeit. Köln, 1780.

Stahl, Das deutsche Handwerk. Giessen, 1874.

Carl Bücher, Die Frauenfrage im Mittelalter. Tübingen, 1882.

Stieda, Litteratur, heutige Zustände und Entstehung der deutschen Hausindustrie. Leipzig, 1889. [Schr. d. Ver. f. Soz. Bd. 39.]

Ad. Held, Zwei Bücher zur socialen Geschichte Englands. Leipzig, 1848.

Fr. Engels, Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England. 2 Ausgabe. Leipzig, 1848.

Max Schippel, Das moderne Elend und die moderne Uebervölkerung. Stuttgart, 1886.

Von Scherzer, Weltindustrien. Leipzig, 1880.

Ettore Friedlander, Die Frage der Frauen-und Kinderarbeit, deutsch von Fleischer. Forbach, 1887.

Ergebnisse der über die Frauen-und Kinderarbeit in den Fabriken auf Beschluss des Bundesraths angestellten Erhebungen, zusammengestellt im Reichskanzleramt. Berlin, 1877.

W. Stieda, Deutschlands sozialstatistische Erhebungen im Jahre 1876. Jahrb. f. Ges. und Verw. R.F. Bd. 1, 1877.

Eine Enquete über Frauen-und Kinderarbeit in der deutsche Flachs-und Leinenindustrie. Arbeiterfreund, Jahrg. 12, 1874.

Reichsenquete über die Baumwoll-und Leinenindustrie, 1878-79.

Stenograph, Protokolle des Bundesrathes, 1878-79.

Worishoffer, Die soziale Lage der Cigarrenarbeiter im Grossherzogthum Baden. Karlsruhe, 1890.

Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahresberichten der mit Beaufsichtigung der Fabriken betrauten Beamten, Jahrg. 1-14. Berlin, 1877-90.

Elster, Die Fabrikinspektionsberichte, und die Arbeiterschutzgesetzgebung in Deutschland. Jahrb. f. Nat. R.F. Bd. 11. 1885.

P. Kollmann, Die gewerbliche Entfaltung im deutschen Reiche. Jahrb. f. Ges. und Verw. R.F., Bd. 11 und 12. 1888-89.

Kuno Frankenstein, Die Lage der Arbeiterinnen in den deutschen Grossstadten, ebenda Bd. 12. 1888.

O. Pache, Unsere Arbeiterfrauen. Leipzig, 1880.

Bericht der Gewerbeordnungscommission des Reichstages, 7 Legislaturperiode, 1 Session, 1890-91, Sammlung d. Drucksachen des Reichstages, 7 Legislaturperiode, 1 Session 1887, Bd. 2, Berlin, 1887, Nr. 83.

Karl Kaerger, Die Sachsgangerei, Landw. Jahrb. Bd. 13. 1890.

Hirschberg, Lohne der Arbeiterinnen in Berlin. Jahrb. f. Nat. Bd. 13. 1886.

Herkner, Die belgische Arbeiterenquete und ihre sozialpolitischen Resultate. Archiv f. soz. Ges. und Staat, Bd. 1. 1888.

Derselbe, Die oberelsassische Baumwollindustrie und ihre Arbeiter. Strassburg, 1887.

Ruhland, Der achtstundige Arbeitstag und die Arbeitschutzgesetzgebung Australiens. Zeitschr. f.d. ges. Staatsgewissenschaft, Bd. 47. 1891.

v. Studnitz, Amerikanische Arbeitverhältnisse. Leipzig, 1879.

Douai, Die Lage der Lohnarbeiter in Amerika, in Tenner, Amerika. Berlin und New York, 1884.

Hirt, Die gewerbliche Thätigkeit der Frauen von hygienischen Standpunkte aus. Breslau und Leipzig, 1887.

Derselbe, Frauenarbeit in Fabriken, in Hirth's Ann. 1875.

Schuler und Burkhardt, Untersuchungen über die Gesundheitsverhältnisse der Fabrikbevölkerung in der Schweiz. Aarau, 1889.

Schonlank, Die Further Quecksilber-Spiegelbelege. Stuttgart, 1888.

John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women. London, 1869; 4 Aufl., 1878, übersetzt von Jenny Hirsch, v.d. Hörigkeit der Frau, 2 Aufl., Berlin 1872, nebst einem Vorbericht über den Stand der Frauenfrage, übersetzt von Ludwig Stockman, 3 Aufl. Stuttgart, 1892.

Die Frau und die Sozialismus, 8 Aufl. Stuttgart, 1891.

v. Raumer, Die Frau und die Sozialdemokratie. Berlin, 1884.

Georg Hannsen, Die drei Bevölkerungsstufen, [111,7: Das Weib im Bevölkerungsstrom]. München, 1889.

Karoline Norton, Die Frauen in England unter dem Gesetz unseres Jahrhunderts. A.D. Engl. Berlin, 1855.

Rubinu und Westergaard, Statistik der Ehen auf Grund der sozialen Gliederung. Jena, 1889.

Lette, Denkschrift über die Eröffnung neuer und die Verbesserung bisheriger Erwerbsquellen für das weibliche Geschlecht. Arbeiterfreund, Jahrb. 1865. Auszug aus dem Protokoll der Sitzung des Vorstandes und Ausschusses des Zent.-Ver. in Preussen für das Wohl der arbeitenden Klasse, nebst Lettes Votum und Promemoria und andere Materialen, ebenda.

Gust. Eberty, Geschichte der Bestrebungen für das Wohl der arbeitenden Frauen in England, ebenda.

Luisa Otto, Das Recht der Frauen auf Erwerb. Hamburg, 1868.

Otto August, Die soziale Lage auf dem Gebiete der Frauen. Hamburg, 1868.

v. Sybel, Ueber die Emanzipation der Frauen. Bonn, 1860.

Schönberg, Die Frauenfrage. Basel, 1872.

Phil. v. Nathusius, Zur Frauenfrage. Halle, 1871.

Rob. König, Zur Charakteristik der Frauenfrage. Leipzig und Bielefeld, 1879.

Hedwig Dohm, Der Frauen Natur und Recht. Berlin, 1876. Dieselbe, Die wissenschaftliche Emancipation der Frau. Berlin, 1877.

Fanny Lewald, Für und wider die Frauen, 2 Aufl. Berlin, 1875.

Franz von Holzendorff, Die Verbesserung in der gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen Stellung der Frauen, 2 Aufl. Berlin, 1877.

Luisa Büchner, Ueber die Frauenemanzipation. Dorpat, 1877.

J. Pierstorff, Frauenfrage und Frauenbewegung. Göttingen, 1879.

Sophie v. Hardenburg, Zur Frauenfrage. Leipzig, 1883.

Laas, Zur Frauenfrage. Berlin, 1883.

Lor. v. Stein, Die Frau auf dem Gebiete der Nationalökonomie, 6 Aufl. Stuttgart, 1886. Derselbe, Die Frau auf dem sozialen Gebiete. Stuttgart, 1880.

Mathilde Reichart Stromberg, Frauenrecht und Frauenpflicht, 3 Aufl. Leipzig, 1883.

F.L. Warneck, Ehret die Frauen, 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1882.

Victor Böhmert, Das Studium der Frauen in besonderer Rücksicht auf das Studium der Medizin. Leipzig, 1872. Derselbe, Das Frauenstudium nach den Erfahrungen an der Züricher Universität. Arbeiterfreund, Bd. 12. 1874.

Hermann, Die Frauenstudien und die Interessen der Hochschule Zurich. Zurich, 1872.

Gneist, Ueber gemeinschaftliche Schulen für Knaben und Mädchen und über die Universitätsbildung der Frauen nach den neueren Erfahrungen in den nordamerikanischen Freistaaten. Arbeiterfreund, Jahrg. 12. 1874.

v. Scheel, Frauenfrage und Frauenstudium. Jahrb. f. Nat., Bd. 22, 1874.

Eug. Dühring, Weg zur höheren Berufsbildung der Frauen, 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1885.

Helene Lange, Frauen Bildung. Berlin, 1889.

Zehender, Ueber den Beruf der Frauen zum Studium und zur praktischen Ausübung der Medezin durch die Frauen. München, 1877.

Ludwig Schwerin, Die Zulassung der Frauen zur Ausübung des artzlichen Berufs. Berlin, 1870.

Mathilde Weber, Aerztinnen für Frauenkrankheiten, eine ethische und sanitäre Nothwendigkeit, 4 Aufl. Tübingen, 1889.

Waldeyer, Das Studium der Medizin und die Frauen. Tagebl. der 61. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Artzerei in Köln, v. 18, 23, No. 1878, wissenschaftl. Theil. Köln, 1889.

O. Heyfelder, Die medizinischen Frauenkurse von Petersburg. Unsere Zeit, 1887, 11.

Die Entstehung und Entwickelung der gewerblichen Fortbildungsschulen und Frauenarbeitsschulen in Würtemberg; herausgegeben von der Königlichen Commission für die gewerblichen Fortbildungsschulen, 2 Aufl. Stuttgart, 1889.

Galle und Kamp, Die hauswirthschaftliche Unterweisung armer Mädchen. Wiesbaden, 1889; Neue Folge, Wiesbaden, 1889. Die hauswirthschaftliche Unterricht armer Mädchen in Deutschland. Schr. d. Ver. f. Armenpflege und Wohlthätigkeit, Heft 12. Leipzig, 1889.

Lina Morgenstern, Allgemeiner Frauenkalender für 1885, 1886, und 1887. Berlin.

Luise Otto Peters, Das erste Vierteljahrhundert des Allgemeinen deutschen Frauenvereins. Leipzig, 1890.

Jenny Hirsch, Geschichte der 25-jahrigen Wirksamkeit [1886-91] des Lettevereins. [Festschrift.] Berlin, 1891.

Amelie Sohr, Frauenarbeit in der Armen-und Krankenpflege daheim und im Auslande. Berlin, 1882.

Ed. Gauer, Die höhere Mädchenschule und die Lehrerinnenfrage. Berlin, 1878.

Spyri, Die Betheiligung des weiblichen Geschlechts am öffentlichen Unterricht in der Schweiz. Sep.-Abdr. der schweizer. Zeitschrift f. Gemeinnützigkeit, Jahrg. 1873, Zurich.

Rüdinger, Vorläufige Mittheilung über die Unterschiede der Grosshirnwindungen nach dem Geschlecht, Beiträge zur Anthropologie und Urgeschichte Bayerns, Bd. 1, 1887.

Während des Druckes erschienen:

Ed. von Hartmann, Die Jungfernfrage, Gegenwart 1891, Nr. 34 und 35.

W. Stieda, Frauenarbeit. Jahrb. f. Nat., Dritte Folge, 11, 2, 1891.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ON THE WOMAN QUESTION AND THAT OF WOMAN'S LABOR.

Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières depuis 1788. Paris, 1867.

Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Le travail des femmes au XIX. siècle. Paris, 1873.

Jules Simon, L'ouvrière, 2^me édition. Paris, 1870.

Villermé, Tableau de l'état physique et moral des ouvriers employés dans les manufactures de coton, de laine et de soie. Paris, 1840.

Kuborn, Rapport sur l'enquête faite au nom de l'académie royale de medicine de Belgique par la commission chargée d'étudier la question de l'emploi des femmes dans les travaux souterrains des mines. Bruxelles, 1868. Documents nouveaux relatifs au travail des femmes et des enfants dans les manufactures, les mines, etc., etc. Bruxelles, 1874.

Condorcet, Lettres d'un bourgeois de New Haven à un citoyen de Virginie, 1787. OEuvres complètes, Brunswick, 1804. The same, Sur l'admission des femmes au droit de cité. Journal de la société de 1789, v. 3, VII. 1790.

Legouvé, Histoire morale de la femme. Paris, 1848; 4^me édition, 1884.

Michelet, La femme. Paris, 1860.

Proudhon, La justice dans l'église et dans la révolution, 1858. Oeuvres anciennes, Paris, 1868-76. Tome 22-26.

Jenny d'Hericourt, La femme affranchie. Bruxelles, 1860.

Juliette Lamber, Idées antiproudhoniennes sur l'amour, la femme et le mariage, 2^me édition. Paris, 1862.

Leon Giraud, Essai sur la condition de la femme en Europe et en Amérique. Paris, 1883.

Eugène Pelletan, La famille. La mère. Paris, 1865.

Actes du Congrès international des droits des femmes. Paris, 1878.

Comte de Franqueville, Les droits des femmes en Angleterre, Compte rendu de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques. Paris, 1891.

ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Working Women in Large Cities, 4th annual Report of the Commission of Labor. Washington, 1878.

Theodore Stanton, The Woman Question in Europe. London, 1884.

Helen Campbell, Prisoners of Poverty, 1887. Prisoners of Poverty Abroad, 1889.

Woman's Work in America, edited by Annie Nathan Meyer. New York, 1891.

Sophia Jex-Blake, Medical Women. Edinburgh, 1871.

A. Huntley, Women and Medicine. London, 1886.

Eliza W. Farnham, Woman and her Era. New York, 1869.

Lester F. Ward, Dynamic Sociology, vol. i. pp. 597-664.

Maria S. Child, History and Condition of Women in various Ages and Nations. Boston, 1840.