NDITIONS AMONG WAGE-EARNING WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES.

The summary already made of the work of bureaus of labor and their
bearing upon women wage-earners includes some points belonging under
this head which it still seemed advisable to leave where they stand. The
work of the Massachusetts Bureau gave the keynote, followed by all
successors, and thus required full outlining; and it is from that, as
well as successors, that general conditions are to be determined. A
brief summary of such facts as each State has investigated and reported
upon will be given, with the final showing of the latest and most
general report,--that from the United States Bureau of Labor for 1889.

Beginning with New England and taking State by State in the usual
geographical order, that of Maine for 1888 leads. Work here was done by
a special commissioner appointed for the purpose, and the chief towns
and cities in the State were visited. No occupation was excluded. The
foreign element of the State is comparatively small. There is no city in
which overcrowding and its results in the tenement-house system are to
be found. Factories are numerous, and the bulk of Maine working-women
are found in them; the canning industry employs hundreds, and all trades
have their proportion of workers. For all of them conditions are better
in many ways than at almost any other point in New England, many of them
living at home and paying but a small proportion of their wages toward
the family support.

A large proportion of the factories have boarding-houses attached, which
are run by a contractor. A full inspection of these was made, and the
report pronounces them to be better kept than the ordinary
boarding-house, with liberal dietary and comfortable rooms. Many of the
women owned their furniture, and had made "homes" out of the narrow
quarters. These were the better-paid class of workers. Several of the
factories have "Relief Associations," in which the employees pay a small
sum weekly, which secures them a fixed sum during illness or
disability. The conditions, as a whole, in factory are more nearly those
of Massachusetts during the early days of the Lowell mills than can be
found elsewhere.

Taking the State as a whole, though the average wage is nearly a dollar
less a week than that of Massachusetts, its buying power is somewhat
more, from the fact that rents are lower and the conditions of living
simpler, though this is true only of remote towns.

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