Probably, however, this last reason for entering unsuitable occupations is the one least often underlying the choice.  Girls select vocations in the main as boys do.  Until very lately chance has been the ruling element far oftener than anything else.

Studies in industry are now for the first time giving us adequate information as to requirements for efficiency, working conditions, wages, living possibilities, and the effects, moral and physical, of various occupations upon both men and women.  The problems arising out of the crossing and recrossing of these various elements are as yet but vaguely understood.  The great gain lies in the fact that their solution is being sought.

The community is of necessity interested in workingwomen as it is in workingmen.  Without these workers the community does not exist.  When they are ill-paid, overworked, underfed, discontented, or inefficient, the community necessarily suffers.  When they work under proper conditions, the community shares their prosperity.  It is thus coming to be seen that the condition of workers is the concern of all the members of the community.

[Illustration:  Photograph by Brown Bros.  Factory workers.  Sewers and sewing-machine operators to the number of over 230,000, according to the 1919 Census, are employed in the United States]

In the case of the woman worker, however, and especially of the young woman worker, the community has a further interest because of the service that women render as the mothers of the next and indeed of all future generations.  If, then, it is shown that women are physically unfit for certain occupations that men may follow with safety, it becomes the business of the community to protect women, even against themselves if necessary, and to deter them from entering such lines of work.

The community must make use of various agencies in bringing about the proper relations between women and their work.  It may use legislation, thereby securing, for example, factory inspectors to improve the sanitary and moral conditions in the places where women and girls are employed.  It may use the school, the library, and various civic improvement forces to inform both girls and their parents as to conditions under which girls should work.  It may employ vocational guides to make proper connections between women and their work.

For all these agencies to do satisfactory work, the first requisite is knowledge of conditions.  This means skillful work upon a vast and rapidly increasing body of facts, and wide dissemination of the results of such work.

[Illustration:  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Unemployed utilizing their spare time to make themselves more efficient.  The community may make use of the schools for such purposes]

We may not stop here to consider what legislatures have done and are doing to improve conditions, other than to mention that the number of hours that women may work is restricted in some states, as is night work, and that a minimum wage is required in some.