INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF WOMEN. 165 



inherit a fortune or have a rich husband to supply her needs. 

 Between these extremes the great mass of women suffer from 

 wasted energies, idleness enforced by prejudice and custom, 

 feverish excitement caused by immethodical and ill-regulated 

 work, and monotonous toil at the needle or the loom, repaid 

 by a scanty pittance, which furnishes them no opportunities for 

 self-culture or recreation. 



A few facts in relation to woman's work in Germany will 

 illustrate this point. At present there is so much admiration for 

 German institutions that these instances of what woman's life is 

 there struck me very forcibly, and as the same causes exist here 

 to a great degree, the results must be somewhat parallel. In 

 one city of two or three hundred thousand inhabitants there are 

 43,417 unmarried women who earn nothing, who contribute 

 nothing to the national support or prosperity, but are mainly 

 supported by relatives, the utmost they do being some little contri- 

 bution to household work. But alongside of this is the painfully 

 significant fact, that eighty per cent, of all the recipients of alms 

 are widows, women who having given their lives in unpaid 

 industry or idleness, and depended upon a man for all produc- 

 tive work, find their resources cut off by his death, and are 

 absolutely unable to take care of themselves. 



Out of a hundred widows in Berlin, eighty-three are obliged 

 to earn their living. Another item shows still more plainly how 

 badly this social economy works for women. 



With advancing age the number of men who work for a liv- 

 ing decreases ; the number of women increases. The average 

 man can from his work lay up a support for his old age. The 

 average woman spends the best years of her life in idleness or 

 in working for her husband and children only, and in her old 

 age has to go to work for her bread. 



Undoubtedly the case is worse in Berlin than it is here, for 

 more of the old feeling exists against women's work there than 

 here, but the prejudice is not obliterated, and few young women 

 above the pressure of absolute want are taught to look upon 

 their own exertions as the means of their future support. 



We cannot afford economically to lose the work of so many 

 women. With a large majority of women in Massachusetts, the 

 productive industry of our State must gradually fall behind that 

 of other communities, unless intelligent and thorough work is 



