If we attempt to verify the statements of the workers by the official figures in the census, showing the proportion of men and women employed in binderies at successive enumerations,[31] we shall be surprised and somewhat bewildered. In 1870 30% were women, 70% were men; in 1880 39.7% were women, 60.3% were men; in 1890 48.5% were women, 51.5% were men; in 1900 51.6% were women, 48.4% were men. This rapid shifting of the relative proportion of men and women would lead the statistician to suppose that in this trade was to be found a perfect example of the displacement of men by women. Behind the figures one seems to read the story of a struggle in which men have been the losers. Yet the comments of workers and employers, and the conditions actually witnessed in binderies in New York contradict this reading of census figures. Evidently more facts are needed in order to understand what is happening in the trade. The bindery trade in New York employs about five thousand women, a third of all the women at work in binderies in the United States. A few are at work in hand binderies, where craftsmen of two or three centuries ago would find tools and methods not entirely unfamiliar. Others work in “edition binderies,” where machines bind books by the thousands. Others work in pamphlet binderies, or magazine binderies. The methods and conditions differ in these different branches of the trade. Whether a book is bound by hand or machine, whether it is covered with levant or paper, whether it is sewed with linen thread or stitched with wire, certain processes are necessary. The sheets must be folded into portable size, the folded sections must be held together in proper order, and the whole must be covered. It is in the matter of the covering that the branches of the trade differ most widely. The making of the hand-bound book, designed to last longest, demands the most numerous processes. At the other extreme is the paper-covered pamphlet.