work. Brassey, the great railroad
contractor, found throughout Germany that her wage was always a third
and often a quarter less than that of men.

For united Germany the description given by Villerme in 1836 is still
true for many points. "The misery in which the cotton spinners and
weavers of the upper Rhine live," he writes, "is so profound that it
produces the saddest results. In the families of manufacturers, drapers,
merchants, etc., half the children born attain their nineteenth year,
this same half ceasing to exist before the age of two years in the
families of weavers and workers at cotton-spinning."

As to numbers employed in trades and industries, it is difficult to
secure them with exactness. The census of 1871 reported three tenths of
the population as agricultural, the males employed in agriculture being
2,338,174, and the females 4,426,573. Household service had 840,000
women on its rolls. In 1875 the cotton-mills employed in weaving and
spinning 95,934 women; the woollen manufacture, nearly 193,000; linen,
hemp, and jute, 190,000. The labor of women and children was hardly
recognized, and statistics had to be disentangled as best they might be
from general tables of occupations. Through the persistent efforts of
the Centre in the German Reichstag, a gradual betterment of the
working-classes has been brought about, and thus indirectly that of
women and children,--the first combined and determined effort being made
in 1889, when three bills were brought up for discussion. The first
made the working-day not to exceed eleven hours; the second demanded the
suspension of industrial labor on Sunday, save in exceptional cases,
when five hours' labor was to be allowed; the third concerned the labor
of women and children, and with some modifications is practically the
law to-day. Night and Sunday labor in mines, smelting-works,
rolling-mills, and dockyards is entirely forbidden, nor can married
women work more than ten hours a day. The Federal Council has the right
also to forbid the employment of women and children in all factories and
establishments where health and morals are exposed to exceptional
dangers.

At the period at which the investigations which brought about the
agitation of the question were made, the number of child laborers had
increased in two years from 155,000 to 192,000, children hardly more
than babies being in the factories. At present the law forbids the
employment of any child under tw