The gain of women in trades over the census of 1870 was sixty-four per cent, the total percentage of women workers for the whole country being forty-nine. The ten years just ended show a still larger percentage; and many of the trades which a decade since still hesitated to admit women, are now open, those regarded as most peculiarly the province of men having received many feminine recruits. These isolated or scattered instances hardly belong here, and are mentioned simply as indications of the general trend. Wise or unwise, experiment is the order of the day, its principal service in many cases being to test untried powers, and break down barriers, built up often by mere tradition, and not again to rise till women themselves decide when and where. Taking States in their alphabetical order, the census of 1880 gives the number of working-women for each as follows:[20]-- Alabama, 124,056. Arizona, 471. Arkansas, 30,616. California, 28,200. Colorado, 4,779. Connecticut, 48,670. Dakota, 2,851. Delaware, 7,928. District of Columbia, 19,658. Florida, 17,781. Georgia, 152,322. Idaho, 291. Illinois, 106,101. Indiana, 51,422. Iowa, 44,845. Kansas, 54,422. Louisiana, 95,052. Maine, 33,528. Massachusetts, 174,183. Michigan, 55,013. Minnesota, 25,077. Mississippi, 110,416. Missouri, 62,943. Montana, 507. Nebraska, 10,455. Nevada, 403. New Hampshire, 30,128. New Jersey, 66,776. New Mexico, 2,262. New York, 360,381. North Carolina, 86,976. Ohio, 112,639. Oregon, 2,779. Pennsylvania, 216,980. Rhode Island, 29,859. South Carolina, 120,087. Tennessee, 56,408. Texas, 58,943. Utah, 2,877. Vermont, 16,167. Washington Territory, 1,060. West Virginia, 11,508. Wisconsin, 46,395. Wyoming, 464. FOOTNOTES: [17] Remarks on Tables of Occupations, Ninth Census of the United States, Population and Social Statistics, p. 663. [18] June, 1893. [19] The table is copied with minute care from that given in the last census; and while it shows one or two deficiencies, the writer is in no sense responsible for them, its accuracy, as a whole, not being affected by the slight discrepancy referred to. [20] The tables in this department of the census for 1890 are not yet ready for the public; but the department states that the increase in women wage-earners averages about ten per cent. V. LABOR BUREAUS AND THEIR WORK IN RELATION TO WOMEN. The difficulties encountered by the enumerators of the United States Census, and the growing conviction that much more minute and organized effort must be given if the real status of women workers was to be obtained, had already been matter of grave discussion. The labor question pressed upon all who looked below the surface of affairs; and very shortly after the census of 1860 a proposition was made in Boston to establish there a formal bureau of labor, whose business should be to fill in all the blanks that in the general work were passed over.