The distinctive associations for secondary mistresses are the Headmistresses’ Association and the Association of Assistant Mistresses in Public Secondary Schools.  These are concerned with general educational as well as professional problems, and their opinion is sought at times by the Board of Education with regard to proposed regulations.  Each of them is represented on the recently established Registration Council, which has just reported (November 1913).

Membership of the Teachers’ Guild of Great Britain and Ireland, of the College of Preceptors, and of the National Union of Teachers is also open to secondary teachers.  In the last-named they may join hands with the great body of elementary teachers; in the first two organisations with private teachers also.  There are also associations for teachers of certain subjects, the Ling Association and the Association of Teachers of Domestic Subjects.  Membership of such bodies as the Historical, Geographical and various Scientific Associations is valuable because not confined to teachers.

Though the President of the Association of Assistant Mistresses has said that “there would be a strong feeling against definite organisation for the purpose of forcing up rates of remuneration,"[7] yet that body has investigated the scales of pay offered by local authorities, and writes in protest when posts are advertised at low rates.

Under present conditions the principle of general equality of income, not yet being considered as a serious proposition, it is surely economically right for the teaching profession to claim remuneration sufficient to give it a status corresponding to the worth and dignity of its work.  Above all, women not entirely dependent on their earnings, and therefore in a position to resist under-payment, should not act as blacklegs and keep down the rate for others dependent for a livelihood on their occupation.

Under-payment for teachers means a narrower, more anxious life than should be theirs who are to live in the strongly electric atmosphere of a body of girls and young women and yet keep a calm serenity of spirit—­a life less full than is essential for those who have to give at all times freely of their best.

Similarly, in order that the fullest possible life may be open to the woman teacher, it seems desirable that continuance in the profession after marriage should be more usual than it is.  Again, from the point of view of the pupils this is desirable.  Mrs Humphrey Ward is not the only opponent of women’s suffrage to state that the atmosphere of girls’ schools suffers from the preponderating spinster element.  Suffragists may for once join hands with her and urge that the married woman is in some ways better suited for young people than her unmarried colleague.[8] Often the most valuable years of a woman’s life are lost to the school by her enforced retirement at marriage.  She gives to it her younger, less experienced