Dressmakers                                     447,760
Milliners                                       122,070
Sewers and sewing-machine operators             231,106
Telephone operators                              88,262
Nurses                                          187,420
Clerks and saleswomen in stores                 362,081
Stenographers and typists                       263,315
Bookkeepers, cashiers, and accountants          187,155
Cooks                                           333,436
Laundresses (not in laundries)                  520,004
Teachers                                        478,027

These are of course merely a few among the four hundred and fifty kinds of work in which women are found.  Any survey of women’s work comes close to a general survey of industry.  We shall find that in some occupations the proportion of men is much larger than that of women.  In others women have made rapid strides.  The accompanying diagram shows that in professional service, in domestic and personal service, and in clerical occupations women are found in largest numbers.  In domestic and personal service the women outnumber the men more than two to one.  In professional service there are four women to five men, a large proportion of the women being teachers.  In the clerical occupations we have one woman to each two men, in manufacturing one woman to six men, in agriculture one woman to seven men, and in trade one to eight.  The occupations for women have been changed somewhat by the new industrial conditions forced upon us by the war, but it is very probable that in a few years the industrial world will return to its normal status before the war for both men and women.

[Illustration:  Proportions of men and women in the United States engaged in special occupations]

[Illustration:  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Farmerettes.  During the World War women at home and abroad rendered especially valuable services in agricultural work]

If it is true that women are claiming and will continue to claim “all labor” for their province, the claim must rest upon one of two assumptions:  Either women are physically, mentally, and morally identical in their capabilities with men, or differences in physical, mental, and moral make-up must be considered as not affecting work.  Most of us are not yet ready to agree to either of these premises.  We must therefore believe that some occupations are more suitable for one sex than for the other.  The fact is, however, that only a small group of radical thinkers have made the opposite claim.  Women are found, it is true, in a large number of the occupations in which men are found.  But they are there for some other reason than that they claim all labor as their sphere.  Some are driven by the stern necessity of doing whatever work is at hand; some by ignorance of their unfitness, or of the unfitness of the work for them; some by the spirit of the age which says, “Come, be free.  Try these things that men do.  See if they suit you.  Find your sphere.”