e testimony of the
fifteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor being in
the same line as that of all in which investigation of the subject has
been made, and all confirming the opinion given. The investigation of
the Massachusetts Bureau in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very
small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest
number, classed by occupations, came from the lowest order of worker,
those employed in housework and hotels; and the next largest was found
among seamstresses, employees of shirt-factories, and cloak-makers, all
of these industries in which under pay is proverbial. The great
majority, receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by seldom
less than ten hours a day of hard labor, and not only live on the sum,
but assist friends, contribute to general household expenses, dress so
as to appear fairly well, and have learned every art of doing without.
More than this, since the deepening interest in their lives, and the
formation of working-girls' clubs and societies of many orders, they
contribute from this scanty sum enough to rent meeting-rooms, pay for
instruction in many classes, and provide a relief fund for sick and
disabled members.

This is the summary of conditions as a whole, and we pass now to the
specific evils and abuses in trades and general industries.

XI.

SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTORY LIFE AND IN GENERAL TRADES.

"Has civilization civilized?" is the involuntary question, as one by one
the fearful conditions hedging about workers on either side of the sea
become apparent. At once, in any specific investigation, we face abuses
for which the system of production rather than the employer is often
responsible, and for which science has as yet found either none or but a
partial remedy. Alike in England and on the Continent work and torture
become synonyms, and flesh and blood the cheapest of all
nineteenth-century products. The best factory system swarms with
problems yet unsolved; the worst, as it may be found in many a remote
district of the Continent and even in England itself, is appalling in
both daily fact and final result. It would seem at times as if the
workshop meant only a form of preparation for the hospital, the
workhouse, and the prison, since the workers therein become inoculated
with trade diseases, mutilated by trade appliances, and corrupted by
trade associates, till no healthy fibre, mental, moral, or ph