as
possible, the best workwomen often making not over $2.87 per week. Even
at these starvation rates, girls prefer factory work to domestic
service; and as this phase was also investigated, we have another
chapter of most valuable and suggestive information. In spite of low
wages and all the hardship resulting, working women and girls as a whole
are found to be precisely what the reports state them to
be,--hard-working, honest, and moral members of the community. General
conditions are much the same as those of Colorado, the summary for all
the States from which reports have come being that the average wage is
insufficient to allow of much more than mere subsistence.

The labor reports for the State of Missouri for 1889 and 1890 do not
deal directly with the question of women wage-earners; but indirectly
much light is thrown by the investigation, in that for 1889, into the
cost of living and the home conditions of many miners and workers in
general trades; while that for 1890 covers a wider field, and gives,
with general conditions for all workers, detailed information as to many
frauds practised upon them. The commissioner, Lee Merriweather, is so
identified with the interests of the worker, whether man or woman, that
a formal report from him on women wage-earners would have had especial
value.

Last on the list of State reports comes an admirable one from Michigan,
prepared by Labor Commissioner Henry A. Robinson, issued in February,
1892, which devotes nearly two hundred pages to women wage-earners, and
gives careful statistics of 137 different trades and 378 occupations.
Personal visits were made to 13,436 women and girls living in the most
important manufacturing towns and cities of the State; and the blanks,
which were prepared in the light of the experience gained by the work of
other bureaus, contained 129 questions, classified as follows: social,
28; industrial, 12; hours of labor, 14; economic, 54; sanitary, 21; and
seven other questions as to dress, societies, church attendance, with
remarks and suggestions by the women workers. The result is a very
minute knowledge of general conditions, the series of tables given being
admirably prepared. In those on the hours of labor it is found that
domestic service exacts the greatest number of hours; one class
returning fourteen hours as the rule. In this lies a hint of the
increasing objection to domestic service,--longer hours and less
freedom being the chief count