WOMEN AND CRIME.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1088, 24 April 1913, Page 4

WOMEN AND CRIME.

The Uuited States Government has issued an interesting pamphlet entitled, ,J £e}atiops between Occupation and Criminality of Women.” In the investigation producing the data contained in -this pamphlet only the absolute criminal has been considered, The lives of 3229 offenders have been made the subject of inquiry. Every one ot these offenders is confined iu a penal institution in one of the six States which were taken as giving a lair illustration of the matter treated.' Dissolute living has not been considered, excepting where it has led to the commission of crime. The results of this investigation are most surprising. Of the 3229 offenders 81 per cent, came from the traditional and supposedly proper pursuit of women-rr-hojisetyprlc withip their own homes, or in the homes of others. While 24 per cent, of the women breadwinners of the country are engaged in domestic service, tnis occupation furnishes 70 per cent, of the offenders in women’s prisons. While 25 per cent, of the WoP?ep breadwinners work in mills and factories ip all the small pay trades, yet they furnish only 17 percent, of the offenders, and as against 70 per cent, from domestics. Women engaged in trade—that is in offices, stores, telephone exchanges—have even a better record than those in factories and mills. Such women

constitute xo per cent, of all women earning their own living, but supply only 3 per cent, of the women who are imprisoned. The pamphlet considers several of the States and towns known for their large employment of women in mills, and makes conclusions from them. Id Paterson, New Jersey, for instance, only 18 per cent, of the women breadwinners are in domestic service, while 72 per cent, work in the mills. However, in the prison population it is found that domestics furnish 64 per cent, of the offenders. In the Slate of Massachusetts, where thousands of women are engaged as textile workers, shoemakers, weavers and spinners, the prison inmates are mainly former domestics. Sixty thousand work in the Massachusetts factories, and they furnish only 16 per cent, of the offenders. Seventy thousand women are housekeepers in their own homes, or hire out as servants, and they contribute 60 per cent, of the offenders. After studying the pamphlet and considering its statements, the conclusion is reached that servants in prison do not, as a rule, come from firstclass hotises. They have worked for people whose standards are but little higher than their own. They have no prospect of rising to anything higher, so the spur of ambition does not drive them forward in the right way, and there is no social standard of their own class to hold them back.