The report concludes:—­

“We find that, through low wages, long hours, unwholesome sanitary conditions, and the discouraging effect of excessive fines, not only is the physical condition injured, but the tendency is to injure the moral well-being.  It is simply impossible for a woman to live without assistance on the low salary a saleswoman earns, without depriving herself of real necessities.”

These were the conditions which, in 1889, led to the formation of the little society which, though limited in numbers, has done admirable and efficient work, its latest effort being to secure from the Assembly at Albany a bill making inspection of stores and shops as obligatory as that of factories.

It was through the concerted effort of its members that the Factory Inspection Act became a law, though not without violent opposition.  The bill originated in the Working-Woman’s Society, was drawn up there, sent to Albany by its delegates, and passed without the aid of money.

There are eleven thousand factories in New York State, and only one inspector to investigate their condition; while in England, scarce larger in territory, forty-one inspectors are appointed by the Government.

The Andrus bill, adding to the power of factory inspectors, raising the working age of children to fourteen years, and prohibiting night work for girls under twenty-one and boys under eighteen, was sent with the Factory Bill to the Central Labor Union, and the women were largely instrumental in obtaining the passage of the measure.

Why such determined opposition still meets every attempt to bring about the same inspection for mercantile establishments cannot be determined; but thus far, though admitted to be necessary, the act has at each reading been laid upon the table.  Another effort will be made in the coming winter of 1893-94.

In spite, however, of much agitation of all phases of woman’s work, it is only some wrong as startling as that involved in the sweating-system that seems able to arouse more than a temporary interest.  One of the most able and experienced women inspectors of the United States Bureau of Labor, Miss de Grafenried, has lately written:—­

“It is an open question whether woman’s pay is not falling, cost and standards of living considered.  Could partly supported labor and children be eliminated, shop employees would get higher rates.  Still there are other economic anomalies that affect women’s wages.  ‘Wholesalers’ and manufacturers shut up their factories and ’give out’ everything—­umbrellas, coats, hair-wigs, and shrouds—­to be made,—­they know not in what den, or wrung they care not from what misery ...  Again, wages are depressed by over-stimulating piece-work; and its unscrupulous use by proprietors who hesitate to confess to paying women only $3 or $4 a week, yet who scale prices so that only experts can earn that sum.  Many employers cut rates as soon as, by desperate