[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.

Many facts, all pointing to the necessity of some such organization, lay
before the men who pondered the matter,--factory abuses of many orders,
the startling increase of pauperism and crime, with other causes which