The report of the Committee on Legislation for Civil Rights, Mrs. Laura M. Johns (Kans.), chairman, showed that it had been in correspondence with many State associations which were working for the repeal of bad laws and the enactment of good ones; for raising the age of consent; for child-labor bills; for women physicians in State institutions; for women on school boards and in high educational positions and for many other civil and legal measures. Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby's report on Industrial Problems affecting Women and Children showed much diligent research into the discriminations against women in the business and educational world and gave many flagrant instances. "In Government positions," she said, "this was clearly due to their lack of a vote." The Government departments at Washington are almost entirely governed by politics and women are greatly discriminated against, notwithstanding civil service rules. The report of A. R. Severn, chief examiner for the Civil Service Commission, shows that during the last ten years less than ten per cent. of the women who have passed the examinations have been appointed, while more than 25 per cent. of the men who passed obtained positions. To prevent the possibility of women obtaining high-class positions the examinations for these are not open to women. Of the 58 employments for which examinations were held, women were admitted to only 22. The per cent. of women employed of those who had passed was 13 in 1898; 6 per cent. in 1899, and lower in 1900, not a woman being appointed to a clerk's position from the waiting list. The Post Office Department in the last year sent out an order that women should not be made distributing clerks wherever it was possible to appoint men.... Legislation for the protection of children has been defeated in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. In the factories of Birmingham, it is stated, children of six and seven are obliged to be at work by 5:30 a.m. and to work twelve hours daily, attending spindles for ten cents a day. Jane Addams says she knows from personal observations that in certain States the conditions of child labor are as bad as they were in England half a century ago. In the great cotton mills at Columbia, S. C., she found a little girl scarcely five years old doing night work thirteen hours at a stretch, for three days in the week.