To two grades of readers these bureau publications were most welcome. First, to the more intelligent among the working-class, “in whose humble cabins,” it was said,[182] “complete sets of Bureau Reports could be found preserved in calico covers having as many colors as ‘Joseph’s coat,’ and presenting as much evidence of constant use as the old-time spelling-book in a country school-house that was passed from scholar to scholar until it has made the round of the school.” Second, to the students of sociology, who pored over their pages, hoping to gain clear ideas of what was going on in the working world of men and women. Excellent though they were, these reports were nevertheless disappointing, at least as far as they related to facts concerning woman’s industrial position. The first and greatest disappointment for readers was the fact that the number of wage-earning women interviewed in any one place by the bureau agents was too small to give even an approximate idea of the whole; e. g. the statistical tables of all industries for New York City were founded on the testimony alone of 2984 women, while at that period (1889) the number of wage-earning women in that city and Brooklyn was estimated at 300,000.(?) As this method of taking one per cent. of the population of women as a guide by which to estimate the conditions of all the others prevailed everywhere, conclusions drawn from the presented statistics were, of necessity, vitiated. To a certain extent they had to be accepted with allowance. With all that this limitation implies, the bureau statistics are, nevertheless, interesting as comprising the best data we have on which to base assumptions of the industrial status of wage-earning women. In regard to wages, the conclusions, though obviously inexact, still show plainly enough that wages were regulated everywhere by the prices of rent and food, and that only so much was paid as would keep life in the worker. In the appended table, taken from the National Report for 1889, it will be seen that in the South, where living is comparatively cheap, wages are lower than in the West, where life’s necessaries come higher. In the East they are a mean between the two.