This is only six or seven per cent of the whole number of women engaged in the class of work indicated, but the Commissioner declares that the investigation is representative so far as the number of women whose affairs enter into it is to be considered. The average age of the women is given as twenty-two years and seven months, though the concentration is greatest at the age of eighteen.... The general average at the beginning of work is put at fifteen years and four months. A great majority of the women interviewed are single, and the average weekly earnings for the cities, as a whole, are five dollars and twenty-four cents. Take your pencil and count it up--room-rent, board, and clothing--and see how much you have left for books or music, recreation or religion. The twentieth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics for last year shows not only the poor pay of women, but the cruel and unjust disparity of wages between men and women doing the same work. Beginning with the lowest rate of wages, for the first comparison of relative male and female pay, it appears that of actual wages paid to 248,200 employees of both sexes, 8.99 per cent of all males receive less than five dollars a week, 4.85 per cent less than six dollars, and 6.77 per cent less than seven dollars. That is, about 20 per cent of all males average less than one dollar per day. But the females working at this low scale of wages comprise 72.94 per cent of all the workers. In the higher scale of wages, 63.78 per cent of all the males receive a dollar and a half or more per day. But only a little more than 10 per cent of the females employed are paid wages as high. Out of 7,257 receiving twenty dollars a week and over, only 268 are women. But the cruelest part of all this is that women, standing side by side with men in the same shops and stores, are paid far less wages for the same work. This is an aristocracy of sex that shames and belies all our claims to democracy. This injustice in the wages of women is already beginning to bear a fearful fruitage. Miss Alice S. Woodbridge, the secretary of the Working-women's Society of New York, after a recent tour of investigation, sums up the result of her observations in the following words: "The wages paid to women average between four and four and one-half dollars per week, and are often reduced by unreasonable and excessive fines. The little cash-girls do not average two dollars a week. In one large house the average wages for saleswomen and cash-girls is two dollars and forty cents a week. In many fashionable houses the saleswomen are not allowed to leave the counter between the hours of eleven A. M. and three P. M., except for lunch, and if a saleswoman has a customer when the lunch-hour arrives, she is obliged to remain and wait on the customer, and the time so consumed is deducted from lunch-time.