The four great curses of working women have always been, as they are today, insufficient wages, intense and often unfair competition, overstrain due to long hours, heavy work or unhygienic conditions, and the lack of diversified skill, or of any opportunity or incentive to acquire and display ability and wisely-directed energy. The story of woman’s wage labor is, therefore, pitifully sad and in many respects discouraging. But it is the story of an industrial readjustment which is not yet near completion, and there is good reason to believe that the turning point has been reached and that better things are in store for the working woman. When we realize, however, what the economic position of women has been in the past and through how many generations large numbers of them have toiled under conditions which involved not only terrible suffering to themselves, but shocking waste to the community, it becomes evident that the present problem will not solve itself, but demands of our generation the best thought, the best energy, and the most thorough legislative regulation designed to conserve the human resources bound up in the mothers of the nation. FOOTNOTES: [1] In 1870, the earliest year for which statistics are available, 14.7%, and in 1900 20.6% of the female population 16 years of age and over were breadwinners. [2] In 1870, 58.1% and in 1900 only 39.4% of all females 10 years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations were in the division “domestic and personal service.” [3] _Boston Courier_, July 13, 1829. [4] From the proceedings of the National Trades’ Union, published in the _National Laborer_, Nov. 12, 1836, and reprinted in the _Documentary History of American Industrial Society_, vol. vi, pp. 285-6. [5] In 1870 nearly 20% of all females 10 years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations were in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits and only 1% in trade and transportation, but in 1900, while the proportion of women in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits had increased to 24.7%, the proportion in trade and transportation had increased to 9.4%. [6] Carey, _Miscellaneous Pamphlets_, Phila., 1831, “To the Ladies who have undertaken to establish a House of Industry in New York,” and “To the Editor of the New York _Daily Sentinel_,” _Select Excerpta_ (A collection of newspaper clippings made by Matthew Carey, now in the Ridgway Branch of the Library Company, Philadelphia), vol. 13, pp. 138-142; _Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land_, 3d ed., p. 15. [7] Quoted in Carey, _Miscellaneous Pamphlets_, No. 12, Philadelphia, 1831. [8] _New York Daily Tribune_, July 9, August 19, 1845. [9] _Fincher’s Trades’ Review_, Nov. 21, 1863. [10] _Industrial Leader_, July 9, 1887. [11] _Workingman’s Shield_, Cincinnati, Jan. 12, 1833. [12] _Workingman’s Advocate_, Chicago, June 6, 1868. [13] Mitchell, _History of the Greenbacks_, p. 307.