Almost all the studies of prostitution heretofore made have noted the high percentage of women who were engaged in domestic service previous to entering the life. So far as my observation goes, I do not believe that this indicates any greater danger from domestic service itself as an occupation than from any other in which unskilled girls engage. Domestic service for women under existing economic conditions corresponds to casual labor for men. It is the job where training and experience are unnecessary in order to find work. Such services would not be desired by families where efficiency is demanded and paid for. A very large proportion of our girls were not competent workers but were girls employed in the lowest stratum of families that employ domestic help at all and where standards of service do not exist. This group includes almost all the colored girls and a considerable number of the foreign-born white girls. The factory operatives form the next largest group; clerks in department stores come third. Ninety-two individuals, or 14 percent, had never engaged in any occupation previous to having entered a life of prostitution. These were either girls whose parents were fairly comfortably off and who preferred to have their daughters at home pending matrimony, or girls who married almost immediately upon leaving school and kept house until matrimony became too much for them. A large proportion of all our young women were not fit to fill any more responsible positions than those they held. Comparing the occupations of the institution cases other than Bedford with those shown in the Bedford table, we find that the factory operatives form the largest group or 32.46 percent, domestic service and department stores coming second and third. (See Table XXX.) The table of occupations of street cases makes quite a different showing, which may or may not be due to the desire of the girls to put the best foot foremost in giving their histories to the investigator. Here the department store clerks form the largest group. Nearly half of the histories, however, say that the girls have never had any occupation previous to entering the life and in 101 cases, no statistics were given. (See Table XLVI). So far as education goes, however, this group is no better equipped for filling more remunerative positions than are the girls in the institutions. Their racial distribution is about the same. There is not much reason to believe that they were greatly different from the institution cases in industrial efficiency. For comparison with the occupational groups of women wage earners in New York City in the population at large, the latest statistics available are those of the United States Census of 1900. This gives the total number of wage-earning women as 329,489. The groups which run into five figures are as follows: