2,696 women and 2,520 children; and a proportionate increase in numbers has taken place.  In the flax and hemp industries nearly seventy thousand workers used hand-looms at home, the larger proportion of these being women.  In the factories it was found that 2,565 women and 1,227 children were at work as spinners, and 3,394 women and 1,020 children as weavers.  Women are steadily employed in the manufacture of straw hats and bonnets, in jute in many forms, in cigar and cigarette making, and in many other industries, cheap clothing leading.  Of the thirty millions and more of population, not quite half are women; and of these nearly half are wage-earners, the majority in unrecorded forms of labor,—­chiefly household service or the care of their own homes, with some petty industry adding its mite to the yearly income.  But industrial training has but begun for Italy.  The wage is pitiably low, the conditions of living hard and full of privation; nor can these facts alter till better education and organization have been brought about.  The latest Italian census is not yet published; but proofs of tables of the comparative wage for twenty years in some of the principal industries have been sent me through the courtesy of Signor Luigi Bodio, the minister of agriculture, commerce, and general statistics.  From these tables it is found that the daily wage of women cotton-spinners has risen from sixty centimes, in 1871, to one franc twenty-six centimes in 1891, this being the equivalent of one lire twenty-six centissimi.  The wage for weaving has risen from eighty centimes, in 1871, to one franc twenty-six centimes in 1891.  Spoolers in 1871 received eighty-eight centimes as against one franc thirty centimes in 1891.  In hemp-spinning the wage has fallen from ninety to eighty centimes, but has risen from ninety-eight centimes to one franc thirty centimes for twisting; the wage in the cases cited being a little more than a third that of men.  In paper-making experienced workers now receive one franc fifty-two centimes as against sixty-six centimes in 1871; and in making of stearine candles one franc as against seventy-eight centimes in 1871.  Running through the tables of every industry, the average is about the same,—­the wage for women, even when doing the same work, hardly more than a third that for men, and the amount for either at bare subsistence point.

In Russia the woman’s wage is but a fifth that of men, with working conditions, save at a few points where the work of Professor Janzhul and his confreres has told, at the very worst,—­the day being from twelve to sixteen hours long even in the best-managed factories, while in the village industries, which, owing to the peculiar conditions of Russian life, make up the larger proportion of her industries, it is for many workers almost unending, the merest respite being given for sleep.  As yet but few authentic figures as to the numbers employed are given, though on the first investigation into domestic industries