telligent work, the number of working-women
in New York is given as very nearly two hundred thousand. Investigations
of the same nature have been made at other points, notably Boston, in
the work of Mr. Carroll D. Wright, one of the most widely known of our
statisticians. But neither Boston nor any other city of the United
States offers the same facilities or gives as varied a range of
employment as is to be found in New York, where grinding poverty and
fabulous wealth walk side by side, and where the "life limit" in wages
was established long before modern political economy had made the phrase
current. This number does not include domestic servants, but is limited
to actual handicrafts. Ninety-two trades are given as standing open to
women to-day, and several have been added since the report was made. A
lifetime would hardly be sufficient for a detailed examination of every
industry in the great city, but it is quite possible to form a just
judgment of the quality and character of all those which give employment
to women. The city which affords the largest percentage of habitual
drunkards, as well as the largest number of liquor saloons to the mile,
is naturally that in which most women are forced to seek such means of
subsistence may be had.

The better-paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of
training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to
another, till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined.
That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one
thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is
the one most overcrowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of payments
lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon figures, too
dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing in some of
its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of intelligence;
and the woman with drunken or otherwise vicious husband, more helpless
often than the widow who turns in the same direction, seeks the same
sources of employment. If respectably dressed and able to furnish some
reference, employment is often found by her in factory or some large
establishments where regular workers have place. But if, as is often the
case, the need for work arises from the death or the evil habits of the
natural head of the family, fortunes have sunk to so low an ebb that
often the only clothing left is on the back of the worker, in the