No pains have been spared to make the book as accurate as possible, and to bring it in every case up to date.

It should be clearly emphasised that each contributor to this volume has expressed her own opinions freely and independently, and that the writers have been selected because they are leading members of their respective professions, not because they represent a particular school of thought.  We have endeavoured to get our material from the most authoritative quarters, irrespective of the personal views of those who have supplied it.  All the writers have given generously of their time and labour in order that they might contribute to an investigation of profound social and national importance—­the clear presentation of the economic position of women as it appears to women themselves.  Widely different as are the professional interests and divergent the opinions of the writers of these essays, no one can, as we think, read consecutively the various sections of the book without arriving at the conclusion that, on certain fundamental questions, there is substantial agreement among them.  Almost all, as a result of their professional experience, definitely express the conviction that women need economic independence and political emancipation:  nowhere is there any hint of opposition to either of these ideals.  The writers are unanimous in their insistence upon the importance—­to men as well as to women—­of equal pay for equal work, irrespective of sex.  Wherever the subject of the employment of married women is mentioned—­and it crops up in most of the papers—­there is adverse comment on the economically unsound, unjust, and racially dangerous tendency in many salaried professions to enforce upon women resignation on marriage.  It is clear that professional women are beginning to show resentment at the attempt to force celibacy upon them:  they feel themselves insulted and wronged as human beings when, being physically and mentally fit, they are not permitted to judge for themselves in this matter.  Apart from their righteous indignation, it may be suggested that, even from the ratepayers’ point of view, the normal disabilities of motherhood, with the consequent leave of absence, would probably in the long run be less expensive than the dismissal, at the zenith of their powers, of experienced workers, who have to be replaced by younger and less efficient women.  It is, moreover, a truism that the best work is produced by the most contented worker.  A fundamentally happy woman, continually strengthened and refreshed by affectionate companionship, is obviously better able to endure the strain of professional work than her unmarried sister, who at best, is deprived of the normal joys of fully—­developed womanhood.  The action of Central and Local Authorities and of other employers who make marriage a disability for their women employees, is alluded to by our contributors with an indignation, the more striking for the studied calm with which it is expressed.[2]