Of every kind of education that has been proposed for girls, whether coeducational or not, we have always heard the same fears expressed.  Such education would make the girl unwomanly, it would unfit her for her true functions, a man could not wish to marry her, and so on.  The first women teachers and doctors had indeed a hard time.  After being admitted to the profession only at the point of the sword, so to speak, they had to make good, and in face of all prejudice, prove their ability to teach or to cure, so as to keep the path open for those who were to follow after them.  No similar demand should be logically made of the working-girl today when she demands coeducation on industrial lines.  For she is already in the trades from which you propose so futilely to exclude her, by denying her access to the technical training preparatory to them, and for fitting her to practice them.

Take some other occupations which employ women in great numbers:  textile mill operatives, saleswomen, tobacco-workers, cigar-workers, boot-and shoe-workers, printers, lithographers, and pressmen, and book-binders.  You can hardly say that these are exceptions, for here are the figures, from the occupational statistics of the census of 1910.[A]

[Footnote A:  The statement that appeared in the report on “Occupations” in the census returns of 1910, that there were but nine occupations in which women were not employed, has been widely commented upon.

An explanation appearing in the corresponding volume of the census report for 1910 shows the great difficulties that enumerators and statisticians experience in getting at exact facts, wherever the situation is both complex and confused.  The census officials admit their inability to do so in the present instance, although they have revised the figures with extreme care.  With all possible allowance for error, women still appear in all but a minority of employments.  The classification of occupations is on a different basis, and the number of divisions much larger; yet even now out of four hundred and twenty-nine separately listed, women are returned as engaged in all but forty-two.  On the other hand there is only one trade which does not embrace men, that of the (untrained) midwife.]

Textile mill operatives 330,766
Saleswomen 250,438
Tobacco-workers and cigar-makers 71,334
Boot- and shoe-makers and repairers 61,084
Printers, lithographers and pressmen 27,845
Book-binders 22,012

Just here we can see a rock ahead.  In the very prospects that we rejoice over, of the early introduction of public industrial training, we can detect an added risk for the girl.  If such technical instruction is established in one state after another, but planned primarily to suit the needs of boys only, and the only teaching afforded to girls is in the domestic arts, and in the use of the needle and the pastebrush for wage-earning, where will our girls be when a few years hence the skilled trades are full of her only too well-trained industrial rivals?  In a greater degree than even today, the girl will find herself everywhere at a disadvantage for lack of the early training the state has denied to her, while bestowing it upon her brother, and the few industrial occupations for which instruction is provided will be overcrowded with applicants.