ct that they have not
been gathered in the interest of a theory but are set down merely as
material for deduction, gives them a value, not always attached to
figures, and will make them serve as the basis of many a practical
reform.

It is women earning a living at manual labor who are meant by
working-women, and thus all professional and semi-professional
occupations, such as teaching, stenography, typewriting, and
telegraphy, with the thousands who are employed in them, are excluded
from the report. Outside of these occupations, three hundred and
forty-three distinct industries have been investigated. Twenty-two
cities have given in returns, all representative as to locality, and
ending with San Francisco and San Jose for the Pacific slope. Personal
interviews were had by the government agents, with 17,427 women, this
being, according to the estimate of the report, from six to seven per
cent. of the whole number of women engaged in the class of work coming
under observation. I am convinced that this estimate of the United
States report is very misleading. The 17,427 women being six per cent.
of all those engaged in the three hundred and forty-two industries
investigated, the total so employed in the twenty-two cities would be
290,450, which on the face of it appears to be absurd. The New York
Commissioner of Labor, in the report of his Bureau for 1885, estimates
that there were, in 1884, over 200,000 women employed in the various
trades in the city of New York alone. Neither of these reports
includes women employed in rougher manual labor, such as scrubbing,
washing, and domestic service. If the New York Commissioner's estimate
for New York City is correct, and I confess it seems to me to be
nearly so, and if Mr. Wright's estimate is as much too low in all the
other cities as it seems to be in New York, the actual number employed
in trades in the twenty-two cities instead of being only 295,450,
cannot be far from 1,200,000. With the exception of certain statistics
on prostitution, the entire work of the United States report has been
done by women appointed by the Bureau, and Mr. Wright bears cordial
testimony to the efficiency of each one in a most difficult and
laborious task, adding: "They have stood on an equality in all
respects with the male force of the Department, and have been
compensated equally with them. It was considered entirely appropriate
in an investigation of this kind, that the main facts should be