In view of these changes, the future of women’s work in binderies is hard to predict. In art binding a few well-educated women have proved themselves capable of performing every process from the folding of the sheets to the tooling of the cover. There would seem to be an opportunity for growth in this branch of the trade, and it is the opinion of some binders that women could be trained to carry on this work in all its departments. In machine binderies it would seem to be largely the lack of mechanical skill, or of opportunity to acquire it, which prevents women’s adjusting themselves to new inventions. The bookbinding trade is not an example of extraordinary industrial evils. Its significance is to be found rather in its illustration of the common lot of women in many occupations. It is not alone in binderies that conditions of industry change rapidly; that machines cause a reorganization of work and then give place to new inventions and new conditions; that speed seems to be the most essential requirement; that women work exhaustingly long hours in the busy season; that specialization appears inevitable, although the continual repetition of one process weakens the power of adjustment which is most needed in a changing environment; that irregularity of employment means loss of all or part of the wages in the dull season; and that the income at best is scarcely sufficient for self support. The experiences of bindery girls illustrate these conditions, yet they also point to several possible methods of improvement. The encouraging facts in connection with women’s work in binderies in New York are, first, that the state has already begun a policy of deliberate intervention. It has prohibited the employment of children under fourteen years of age. It has safeguarded them between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, limiting their working hours to eight in a day. It has made increasingly strict demands regarding the sanitary conditions of factories. It has recognized the principle of limiting the hours of labor of women, however faulty its provision may be for this purpose. Second, there is a growing interest in industrial education in public schools. Third, more than twelve hundred bindery women in New York are members of the women’s local of the bookbinders’ union, while a league of employers has been formed to deal collectively with the union and thus to “abolish in the bindery trade the system of making individual labor contracts, and to introduce the more equitable system of forming collective labor contracts.”