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It is only five years ago since the Pittsburgh Survey commenced the investigation which was the first exhaustive attempt to interpret an industrial community to employers of labor, as well as to the community at large; and since the publication of Miss Butler’s Women and the Trades in 1909—the first of the six volumes of the Survey to appear—more than one city has made inquiry into the conditions under which the women and girls of the community were earning their livelihood. Notable among these inquirers have been those made by the Women’s City Club of Chicago, under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation; by the Kansas City Board of Public Welfare, which began in February, 1911, and is still in process; and by the Russell Sage Foundation for Birmingham, Ala., the latter being a reportorial survey rather than the intensive investigation made in Pittsburgh.

Five years before any of these surveys were undertaken, however, a committee composed of sociologists, economists, philanthropists and educators not only made a special investigation of the workrooms of New York City, but reached conclusions which concretely express at any rate the salient points brought out by every survey which has since been made: (1) that wages of unskilled labor were declining and in most cases insufficient to maintain the worker according to the minimum community standard of living; (2) that while there were in many directions good opportunities for skilled labor, the supply was inadequate; (3) that the condition of the young, inexpert working girls must be ameliorated by the opening of training classes for those who have reached the age to obtain working papers; and later experience has shown, (4) that a vocational bureau established in connection with the public schools tends to help girls make the most of their equipment and guides them away from the occupations which do not offer the right sort of opportunity.