THE NECESSARY SEQUEL OF CHILD-LABOR LAWS 315
more swiftly, but the endurance of the girl workers remains the same. No increase in vitality responds to the heightened pressure. A constant drain of nervous energy follows particularly deplor- able in the case of young women, whether they are to marry after a few years of overstrain, or to continue through longer years of such employment.
Larger proportion of young workers. In the ages of the workers the difference between working-men and working- women is most marked. The largest percentage of men engaged in gain- ful occupations are adults in the prime of their strength, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four years. The largest per- centage of working-women are between sixteen and twenty years of age a fact which indicates more clearly than all comments how immature, how helpless, and how dependent upon the bene- ficence of employers is this rapidly growing body of wage- earners.
The enormous proportion of young girls in certain branches of manufacture is brought out in the following statements: In silk-mills, for instance, the percentage of young men (between sixteen and twenty years) is less than one-third of the older men over twenty-one years. Young girls are employed in such large numbers that the percentage of those between sixteen and twenty years is the same as that of all the women over twenty-one.
Young men between 16 and 20 years 8.8
Men over 21 years 26.8
Young girls between 16 and 20 years 24.2
Women over 21 years 24.4
So, too, in knitting and hosiery mills the percentage of young men is small only one-half of the older men. The percentage of young girls is again practically the same as that of the older women :
Young girls between 16 and 20 29. 1
Women over 21 30.1
This high proportion of young girls is found in almost all branches of manufacture in which women are employed. The advancing army of " working-women " continues to be recruited
