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by 1879, in that state, little children from eight to eleven years old were put to work, and the hours ranged from eleven to fourteen a day.

Wherever the foreign element penetrated, the need of exceptional wages and treatment in order to secure "hands" disappeared, and with the increased efficiency of the means of transportation and communication conditions everywhere tended rapidly to equalize themselves: The Civil War, moreover, threw thousands of women upon their own resources; they were obliged to compete with men; and the result was the permanent opening up to the sex of many new fields of employment.

Within comparatively recent years the numbers and the proportions of both women and children gainfully employed have increased decidedly, as is shown by the Occupation figures in the United States Census Reports. In 1880 the total number of females 10 years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations was 2,647,157, while in 1900 it was 5,319,397, or more than double the former figures. The proportion gainfully employed to the total female population meanwhile increased from 14.7 per cent. in 1880 to 17.4 per cent. in 1890 and to 18.8 per cent. in 1900. This increase was general throughout all the divisions of the United States, but was evidently not as marked between 1890 and 1900 as during the previous decade.

Though the statistics of child laborers in 1890 were so seriously defective as to be wholly invalidated,1 the gen

1 For evidence of this fact see the Twelfth Census of the United States, Occupations, pp. lxvi-lxxii.

eral movement can be satisfactorily ascertained by comparing the figures for 1900 with those for 1880. At the latter date 1,118,356 children from 10 to 15 years of age, or 16.8 per cent. of all in that age group, were engaged in gainful occupations, while in 1900 1,750,178 children, or 18.2 per cent. of the same age group, were gainfully employed. The proportions for female children were much lower in both decades, being 9.0 per cent. in 1880 and 10.2 per cent. in 1900, but the proportions for male children were much higher and showed a comparatively rapid rate of increase, rising from 24.4 per cent. in 1880 to 26.1 per cent. in 1900. Child labor, however, has not increased so rapidly as woman labor, and the movement is not so uniform through the different geographical divisions, though increased proportions are shown for each sex in all the divisions except the South Central, in which the proportion for female children was slightly smaller in 1900 than in 1880.

On the other hand, in the proportion which children form of the total number of gainful workers there has been a slight decrease during the twenty years, due entirely to a movement among the boys, as is shown in the table on the next page, which gives for the United States, the distribution, as men, women, and children, of persons engaged in gainful occupations in 1880 and 1900.

There is evidently a marked advance in the relative importance of women in the industrial field, and a slight decrease in the relative importance of children. The increase, moreover, in the proportion of women in gainful

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occupations is common to all sections of the country, while the decrease in the proportion of children appears in every division except the Western, where the percentages are very small.

The proportions of women and of children to men in the gainfully employed population differ considerably in the various geographical divisions, but this difference is not the same for both. The North and South Atlantic divisions, for instance, showed in 1900 the largest proportions of women 16 years of age and over, 20.2 and 19.3 per cent. respectively. In the North Atlantic division, however, only 3.6 per cent. of the gainful workers were children, while in the South Atlantic division 11.2 per cent. were from 10 to 15 years of age. The proportion of children is even higher, 11.5 per cent., in the South Central division, where the proportion of women is only 15.7 per cent. The North Central and Western divisions show the largest proportion of men, and the smallest of women. The smallest proportion of children is found in the West

ern division, but in the North Central division there is employed a mes, th proportion of children, 3.8 per cent., than in the North Atlantic division. Evidently the Atlantic states employ the largest proportion of women as compared with men, and the Southern states the largest proportion of children as compared with both men and women, while in the Western states woman and child labor are both of relatively small importance. By states and territories the employment of women ranged in 1900 from 31.8 per cent. in the District of Columbia to 6.6 per cent. in Wyoming, and the employment of children from 16.6 per cent. in South Carolina to 1.0 per cent. in Montana.

The conclusions to be drawn are: (a) that the number of female breadwinners is increasing faster than the number of male breadwinners, and much faster than the adult female population; (b) that the number of gainfully employed children, though it does not increase quite as rapidly as the number of gainful workers of all ages, has still grown faster than the total population 10 to 15 years of age; (c) that, to a certain extent at least, women may be said to have displaced both children and men in gainful occupations; (d) that the largest proportions of women as compared with men engaged in gainful occupations are found in the two Atlantic divisions, though the largest numbers are found in the North Atlantic and the North Central divisions; and (e) that the largest proportions of children as compared with adults, and also the

largest numbers, engaged in gainful occupations, are found in the two Southern divisions.1

3. Legislation in the United States: As in England so in the United States it has gradually come to be recognized that the moral and physical well-being of the community demands the legal restriction of woman and child labor, and nearly every state in the union has upon its statute books some form of legislation upon this subject.2 The laws affecting children rest upon the parental relation of the state and, as the child is not supposed to be capable of entering into a free contract, their constitutionality is unquestioned. The legislation upon the subject of woman labor, on the other hand, rests upon the police power of the state, and its constitutionality has been attacked upon the double ground that it is class legislation and denies the right of free contract. These laws relate, in general, (a) to the age limit below which employment is illegal, (b) to the hours of labor of both women and children, and (c) to the question of education. The requirement that seats shall be provided for women employed in manufacturing, mechanical and mercantile establishments is also general.

The age limit varies from ten to fourteen years, and a still greater variation is shown in the industries to which this compulsory age limit applies. There is no state

1 Statistics concerning the number and proportion of young persons, 16 to 20 years of age, are also given in the Twelfth Census, Occupa tions, pp. cxxxix-cxliii.

Appendix A contains a table of woman and child labor laws in force May 1, 1904. For a brief summary of the legislation relating to child labor, see Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 52, pp. 558-569.

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