ioner gives even more details, and comes to the same
conclusion; and though other reports do not take up the subject in
detail, their indications are the same.

The first general and rational presentation of the subject in all its
bearings, both for employed and employer, has lately been made during
the Woman's Congress at Chicago, May, 1893, in which the Domestic
Science section discussed every phase of wrongs and remedies.[48] The
latter sum up in the formation of bureaus of employment in every large
city, fixed rates, and full preparatory training. A keen observer of
social facts has stated: The intelligence offices of New York alone
receive from servants yearly over three million dollars, and are
notoriously inefficient. This, or even half of it, would provide a great
centre with training-schools, lodgings for all who needed them, and a
system by which fixed rates were made according to the grade of
efficiency of the worker. Till household service comes under the laws
determining value, as well as hours and all other points involved in the
wage for a working-day, it will remain in the disorganized and hopeless
state which at present baffles the housekeeper, and deters
self-respecting women and girls from undertaking it. To bring about some
such organization as that suggested will most quickly accomplish this;
and there seems already hope that the time is not distant when every
city will have its agency corresponding to the great Bourse du Travail
in Paris, but even more comprehensive in scope. Co-operation within
certain limited degrees, so that private home life will not be infringed
upon, must necessarily make part of such a scheme, and has already been
tried with success at various points in the West; but details can
hardly be given here. It is sufficient to add that with such new basis
for this form of occupation the "servant question" will cease to be a
terror, and the most natural occupation for women will have countless
recruits from ranks now closed against it.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] Fifteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, p.
68.

[42] Ibid.

[43] House of Representatives Report No. 2309: Report of the Committee
on Manufactures on the Sweating-System, House of Representatives,
January, 1893.

[44] Child Labor. By William F. Willoughby, A.B. Child Labor. By Miss
Clare de Grafenried, Publications of the American Economic Association,
vol. v. no. 2.

[45] Our Toiling Children. By Flor