or found that 80 per cent came
directly from their own homes or from the traditional pursuits of
women![2]

The anomaly is the more painful because women are so active in trying
to better the conditions in trades which men control. Feminine circles
everywhere have been convulsed with sympathy for shop and factory
girls. Intelligent and persistent efforts are making to reach and aid
them. This is, of course, right, and it would be a national calamity
if such organizations as the Woman's Trade Union League and the
Consumer's League should lose anything of their vigor. But the need
of the classes they reach is really less than the need of household
workers. In the first place, the number affected is far less.

It is customary, in presenting the case of the shop and factory girl,
to speak of them as "an army 7,000,000 strong." It is a misleading
exaggeration. The whole number of American women and girls over ten
years of age earning their living wholly or partially is about
7,000,000.[3] Of this number from 20 per cent to 25 per cent belong
to the "army" in shops and factories; moreover, a goodly percentage of
this proportion are accountants, bookkeepers, and stenographers,--a
class which on the whole may be said to be able to look after its own
needs. The number in domestic service is nearly twice as great,
something like 40 per cent of the 7,000,000.

There are almost as many dressmakers, milliners, and seamstresses as
there are factory operators in this 7,000,000. There are nearly twice
as many earning their living in dairies, greenhouses, and gardens as
there are in shops and offices.

The greater number in domestic service is not what gives this class
its greater importance. Its chief importance comes from the fact that
it is in a _permanent_ woman's employment; that is, the household
worker becomes on marriage a housekeeper and in this country
frequently an employer of labor. The intelligence and the ideals which
she will give to her homemaking will depend almost entirely on what
she has seen in the houses where she has worked; that is, our domestic
service is _self-perpetuating_, and upon it American homes are in
great numbers being annually founded. In sharp contrast to this
permanent character of housework is the transientness of factory and
shop work. The average period which a girl gives to this kind of labor
is probably less than five years. What she learns has little or no
relation to her future as a house