the boy ought to be thoroughly taught on the wage-earning
side, and while such teaching should cover all the more important
occupations, to which he is likely to be called, the girl's
corresponding training shall as a matter of course be quite a
secondary matter, fitting her only for a limited set of pursuits, many
of these ranking low in skill and opportunities of advancement, and
necessarily among the most poorly paid; these being all occupations
which we choose to assume girls will enter, such as sewing or
box-making. Only recently have girls been prepared for the textile
trades, though they have always worked in these, first in the home and
since then in the factories. Still less is any preparation thought
of for the numberless occupations that necessity and a perpetually
changing world are all the while driving girls to take up. There were
in 1910, 8,075,772 women listed as wage-earners in the United States.
Would it not be as well, if a girl is to be a wage-earner, that
she should have at least as much opportunity of learning her trade
properly, as is granted to a boy?

Setting aside for the moment the fact that girls are already engaged
in so many callings, it is poor policy and worse economy to argue that
because a girl may be but a few years a wage-earner, it is therefore
not worth while to make of her an efficient, capable wage-earner. That
is fair to no one, neither to the girl herself nor to the community.
The girl deserves to be taken more seriously. Do this, and it will
then be clear that a vocational system wide enough and flexible enough
to fit the girl to be at once a capable mother-housekeeper, and a
competent wage-earner, will be a system adequate to the vocational
training of the boy for life-work in any of the industrial pursuits.
It is self-evident that the converse would not hold.

And first, to those readers of advanced views who will think that I
am conceding even too much in thus consenting apparently to sink
the human activities of the woman in those of the mother during the
greater part of maturity. Touching the question of personal human
development, I concede nothing, as I assert nothing, but I accept
present-day facts, and desire to make such compromise with them as
shall clear the way for whatever forms of home and industrial life
shall evolve from them most naturally and simply. We may observe
with satisfaction and hopefulness that the primitive collection of
unrelated industries whic