In the United States, women’s clubs, women’s societies, women’s medical associations, special committees of women in many cities have courageously undertaken the study of this problem, intending by means of investigation and publicity to lay bare its sources and seek its remedy.

The sources of the evil are about the only phase of the problem which has never been adequately examined.  It is true that we have suspected that the unsteady and ill-adjusted economic position of women furnished some explanation for its existence, but even now our information is vague and unsatisfactory.

A number of years ago, in 1888 to be exact, the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics made an interesting investigation.  This was an effort to determine how far the entrance of women into the industrial world, usually under the disadvantage of low wages, was contributing to profligacy.  The bureau gathered statistics of the previous occupations of nearly four thousand fallen women in twenty-eight American cities.

Of these unfortunates over eight hundred had worked in low-waged trades such as paper-box making, millinery, laundry work, rope and cordage making, cigar and cigarette making, candy packing, textile factory and shoe factory work.

About five hundred women had been garment workers, dressmakers, and seamstresses, but how far these were skilled or unskilled was not stated.

The department store, at that time little more than a sweat shop so far as wages and long hours of work were concerned, contributed one hundred and sixteen recruits to the list.

On the whole, these groups were what the investigators had expected to find.

There were two other large groups of prodigals, and these were entirely unexpected by the investigators.  Of the 3,866 girls examined 1,236, or nearly thirty-two per cent, reported no previous occupation.  The next largest group, 1,115, or nearly thirty per cent, had been domestic servants.  The largest group of all had gone straight from their homes into lives of evil.  A group nearly as large had gone directly from that occupation which is constantly urged upon women as the safest and most suitable means of earning their living—­housework.

Now you may, if you want to drop the thing out of your mind as something too disagreeable to think about, infer from this that at least sixty-two per cent of those 3,866 women deserved their fate.  Some of them were too lazy to work, and the rest preferred a life of soiled luxury to one of honest toil in somebody’s nice kitchen.  Apparently this was the view taken by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, because it never carried the investigation any farther.  It never tried to find out why so many girls left their homes to enter evil lives.  It never tried to find out why housework was a trade dangerous to morals.

Fortunately it did occur to the women’s organizations to examine the facts a little more carefully.  In this article I am going to take you over some of the ground they have covered and show you where their investigations have led them.