ical girl leaves
school about the same time, becomes a wage-earner for a few years,
then marries and spends the rest of her life keeping house and rearing
children. To the man wage-earning is the real business of life. To the
woman it is a means for filling in the gap between school and
marriage, a little journey into the world previous to settling down to
her main job.

The most radical and important difference between the two sexes with
respect to wage-earning is found in the length of the working life.
The transitory character of the wage-earning phase in the life of most
women is clearly seen in the contrasted age distribution shown in
Table 13.

TABLE 13.--PER CENT OF TOTAL POPULATION ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS
DURING THREE DIFFERENT AGE PERIODS

----------------------+-------------+------------+
Age period | Women | Men |
----------------------+-------------+------------+
16 to 21 | 60 | 85 |
21 to 45 | 26 | 98 |
45 and over | 12 | 85 |
----------------------+-------------+------------+

Approximately 85 per cent of the boys and slightly less than 60 per
cent of the girls between the ages of 16 and 21 are at work. In the
next age group--21 to 45--given by the census, 98 per cent of the men
are at work, but the proportion of women employed in gainful
occupations drops to 26 per cent, or about one in four; in the next
age group--45 and over--it falls to about 12 per cent, as compared
with 85 per cent of the men. Of the women still at work in the older
age group, over one-half are engaged in domestic and personal service
as servants, laundresses, housekeepers, etc.

TABLE 14.--NUMBER EMPLOYED IN THE PRINCIPAL WAGE-EARNING OCCUPATIONS
AMONG EACH 1,000 WOMEN FROM 16 TO 21 YEARS OF AGE

Manufacturing and mechanical industries:
Apprentices to dressmakers and milliners 4
Dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory) 20
Milliners and millinery dealers 17
Semi-skilled operatives:
Candy factories 6
Cigar and tobacco factories 15
Electrical supply factories 10
Knitting mills 11
Printing and publishing 8
Woolen and worsted mills:
Weavers