they were women who were
looking forward to self-support, and who were borrowing the whole, or a
part of the money required for their current expenses, on the promise of
repaying it with the wages of their subsequent work.

Many of them were absent a part of the year, teaching, were giving
private lessons, or were teaching classes in the preparatory school
connected with the college; and, if a few hours of leisure were left
after all this employment, they were likely to be spent upon extra
studies; aside from this, they did their own sewing, and many of them
boarded themselves. They often overworked, but it was the necessities of
their lives that were driving them, and not the curriculum of Antioch
College. However, if the English feeling respecting health, and the
means of preserving it, prevailed in our country, these mistakes would
less frequently occur.

Unquestionably our whole nation needs some escape from its exhausting
activities. We need either less work, or some more skilful combination
of the different varieties of work, that will secure us more rest, and,
except in a small circle of wealth, our women, as a rule, need this rest
more than the men. We need repose, freedom from anxiety perhaps, more
even than freedom from work. How are we to get it?

We cannot have back the caste condition of society, nor would we desire
it. We cannot stop the progress of our system of free education, nor
would we be willing to do it. We cannot set aside the practice and
belief in equality of education for men and women; men would not like
it, and women would not permit it. There are many things that can be
done that will conduce to the desired result, and the best among them
for women is, to organize women's work.

The education is not a mistake; the fault lies in this, that the
industries of women have not kept pace with their advancing education.
They have been exempt from bread-winning to a degree unknown in the old
countries, and the average education is far higher than exists elsewhere
among women. They have startled the world a little by attempting a few
of the intellectual industries hitherto monopolized by men, and, though
the opening of the professions, or, indeed, all lines of human industry,
to women, is not to be undervalued, of almost infinitely greater
importance is the application of scientific economical principles to the
large sphere of work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a
disastrously