ithin recent years the
great department stores have appointed "social secretaries," who look
after the weal and woe of the employees. It would be well to have such
secretaries in the factories and mills also. Since 1874 the working week
of sixty hours for women in industry and commerce has spread from
Massachusetts to almost the entire Union. Since 1890, night labor has
been prohibited by law. The working girls have been provided with seats
while at work, partly as a result of legislation and partly by the
voluntary act of the employers.

In agriculture women find a profitable field of activity. Of course they
are never field hands, but are employers and laborers in the dairy
business, in poultry farming, and in the raising of vegetables and fruit.
Women have introduced the growing of cress, cranberries, and cucumbers in
various regions, and have cultivated the famous asparagus of Oyster Bay
and the "Improved New York Strawberries." In 1900, there were 980,025
women engaged in agriculture (as compared with 9,458,194 men). The number
of women domestic servants in the United States amounts to 2,099,165;
fifty per cent of the families dispense with servants, since they cannot
afford to pay $15 to $20 a month for a servant, or $30 for a cook.
Educated women, called visiting housekeepers, undertake the supervision of
some of the households of the better class, aided, of course, by help in
the house.

The legal status of the American women is regulated by 52 sets of laws,
corresponding to the number of states and territories. The civil code is
unfavorable to woman in most of the states. In the National Trade Union
League (New York) the Reverend Anna Shaw declared recently that in 38
states the property laws made "joint property holding" legal, as a result
of which the wife has no independent control of her personal earnings or
her personal effects, _e.g._ her clothes. In 38 states the wife also has
no legal authority over her children. For full particulars the reader is
referred to Volume IV of the _History of Woman's Suffrage_. To an
increasing extent the women are using their right to administer their
property independently, and the men are usually proud of the business
ability and success of their wives.

A _legal_ regulation of prostitution (such as prevailed formerly in
England and as prevails now in Germany) does not exist in the United
States. Cincinnati is the only city which in the European sense has police
contro