centers, vacation
playgrounds, public and private charities, district nurses and
visiting nurses sent out by various agencies, deaconesses and other
church visitors, Young Women's Christian Association leaders and
helpers, missionaries, welfare workers in large manufacturing or
mercantile establishments, probation officers, and many others.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Settlement work at Greenwich House, New York. The settlement worker
to succeed must be truly altruistic]

The social worker must of course have the same suitability for
teaching or nursing or any other of the various tasks that she may
undertake as has the teacher or nurse or other person who works under
different auspices. She must have in addition a truly altruistic
spirit, a deep earnestness which will survive discouragement, and a
real insight into the circumstances, handicaps, and possibilities of
others. This insight presupposes maturity of thought; and the young
girl must serve a long apprenticeship with life before she is at her
best as a social worker. It sometimes seems as though no field was so
exactly suited to the abilities of the married woman who has time for
service, or the mother whose children are grown, leaving her free
again to teach or nurse the sick or bring justice to the little child
as she was trained to do in her youth.

Less common vocations for women--but still often chosen after all--are
reserved for those whose abilities are so specialized and so striking
that they compel a choice. Singers, artists with brush or pen, the
natural actress, the journalist or author, need usually no one to
guide their choice. Our great difficulty here is not to open the
girl's eyes to her opportunity, but to restrain the one who has not
measured her ability correctly from attempting that which she cannot
perform. The same is true of girls who aspire to be physicians,
lawyers, or ministers. Some few succeed in all these vocations. Many
more have not the scientific habits of mind, the stability, or the
endurance to make a successful fight for recognition against great
odds.

Many girls mistake what may be a pleasant and satisfying avocation for
a life work. For the girl who will not be held back, there may be a
life of achievement ahead, with fame and all the other accompaniments
of successful public life; or there may be the disappointments of
unrealized ambition. We must see that girls face this possibility with
the other.