keeping. Of the total number, 4,928 live at home, but only
701 of them receive aid or board from their families. The average number
in these families is 5.25, and each contains 2.48 workers.

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.

In home conditions 12,120 report themselves as "comfortable," while
4,692 give home conditions as "poor." "Poor," to the ordinary observer,
is to be interpreted as wretched, including overcrowding, and all the
numberless evils of tenement-house life, which is the portion of many. A
side light is thrown on personal characteristics of the workers, in the
tables of earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who reported, 373 earn
less than $100 a year, and this class has an average of 86.5 lost days
for the year covered by the investigation. With the increase of
earnings, the lost time decreases, the 2,147 who earn from $200 to $450
losing but 37.8; while 398, earning from $350 to $500 a year, lost but
18.3 days.

Deliberate cruelty and injustice on the part of the employer are
encountered only now and then; but competition forces the working in as
inexpensive a manner as possible, and thus often makes what must sum up
as cruelty and injustice necessary to the continued existence of the
employer as an industrial factor. Home conditions are seldom beyond
tolerable, and very often intolerable. Inspection,--the efficiency of
which has greatly increased,--the demand by the organized charities at
all points for women inspectors, and the gradual growth of popular
interest are bringing about a few improvements, and will bring more; but
the mass everywhere are as stated. Ignorance and the vices that
accompany ignorance--want of thoroughness, unpunctuality,
thriftlessness, and improvidence--are all in the count against the
lowest order of worker; but the better class, and indeed the large
proportion of the lower, are living honest, self-respecting, infinitely
dreary lives.

It is a popular belief, already referred to elsewhere, that the
working-women form a large proportion of the numbers who fill houses of
prostitution; and that "night-walkers" are made up chiefly from the same
class. Nothing could be further from the truth,--th