and authoritative knowledge as to their lives, their earnings,
and their status as a whole. Their numbers were equally unknown, nor was
there interest in their condition, save here and there among special
students of social science. On the other hand there was a popular
impression that the ranks of prostitution were recruited from the
manufactory, and that a certain stigma necessarily rested upon the
factory-worker and indeed upon working-girls as a class.

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 Tenth Census of the United States gave the number of women employed
in the city of Boston as 38,881, 20,000 of whom were in occupations
other than domestic service. Each year, as we have already seen, had
touched more and more nearly upon the facts bound up in their lives, but
it had become necessary to determine with an accuracy that could not be
brought in question precisely the facts given under the six headings. To
the surprise of the special agents detailed for this work, who had
anticipated disagreeables of every order, the girls themselves took the
liveliest interest in the matter, answered questions freely, and gave
every facility for the fullest searching into each phase involved.
American girls were found to form but 22.3 per cent of the whole number
of working-women in Massachusetts, of whom but 58.4 per cent had been
born in that State.

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.

The average age of working-gi