[35] L'Ouvrière, p. 158.
[36] Le Travail des Femmes aux XIX. Siècle.
[37] Annuaire de la Bourse du Travail. Volumes from 1887 to 1892 inclusive.
[38] Rapport sur l'Enquête faite au nom de l'Académie Royale de Médecine de Belgique, par la commission chargée d'étudier la question de l'emploi des femmes dans les travaux souterrain des mines, Bruxelles, 1868.
Documents nouveaux relatifs au travail des femmes et des enfants, dans les manufactures, les mines, etc, etc. Bruxelles, 1874.
CHAPTER IX.
GENERAL CONDITIONS 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.