There are few women cooks, the domestic servants being almost exclusively housemaids, waitresses and nursemaids. Where several maids are employed, each of them has an hour or two of leisure through the day; but in the case of the cook-and-one-maid menage, which is by far the most common, Sunday afternoon, and occasionally,—but by no means universally,—an afternoon during the week is given. The long day is a potent factor in the servant problem; and yet the Japanese women, like their sisters in other communities, prefer to go to work at the machines in the little shops. I have talked with as many of them as could understand English, and none would consider going back to housework. On having their attention called to the fact that they were working just as long in the shops they smiled and nodded, saying: “Bimeby not work so long,” which may forecast a similar situation to that brought about by certain of the Chinese huis, who have, notably among the tailors, succeeded in securing an eleven-hour day. It is an undoubted fact that rather than become a household servant at a minimum wage of $4.00 a week and her food,—in many cases all her living expense,—the women work twelve and fourteen hours in the shop for from $2.00 to $5.00. Clerks and stenographers have an eight-hour day. Shop girls are on duty from seven-forty-five until five o’clock, with an hour at noon and a Saturday half holiday three months in the year. One shop closes on Saturday at one o’clock four months in the year. The shop girls have two weeks’ vacation with pay, and all the stores provide seats. Stenographers also have two weeks’ vacation with pay, in a great many cases being allowed a three months’ vacation every three years. Teachers are on duty from eight-forty-five in the morning until two-fifteen in the afternoon—almost an hour and a half less than the regulation time for this work. They have a somewhat longer vacation, too, than elsewhere. In her consideration of hours of work, in “Women and the Trades,”[8] Miss Butler questions the length of the working day which may be considered “long.” “At present (even) ten hours as the limit of the working day is far from universal,” she says. “Should ten hours, however, be set as a permissive standard? Or should we seek rather to work out, on the basis of health, a lower maximum beyond which no employe may go, and below this maximum set others corresponding to the degree of strain in different industries?... Hours are ‘long,’ whether the day is eight hours or ten, if the work is continued so long that it causes ill health or interferes with the employes’ capacity for recreation.” Footnote 8: Pp. 354-5-6.