Our first classification concerns the girl’s fitness for this or that work.  The everyday work of the world in which our girls are to find a part may be separated into three fairly well-marked classes:  making things, distributing things, and service.  The first question we must ask concerning a girl desirous of finding work is, then:  Toward which of these classes does her natural ability and therefore probably her inclination tend?  Natural handworkers make poor saleswomen; natural traders or saleswomen are likely to be uninterested and ineffective handworkers.  The girl whose interests are all centered in people must not be condemned to spend her life in the production of things; nor, as is far more common, must the girl who can make things, and enjoys making them, spend her life in merely handling the things other people have made, as she strives to make connection between these things and the people who want them.  Then there is the girl who is efficient and who finds her pleasure in “doing things for people.”  Service—­and we must remember that service is a wide term, and that no stigma should attach to the class of workers which includes the teacher, the physician, and the minister—­is clearly the direction in which such a girl’s vocational ambition should be turned.

It would be idle to assert that all women are suited to marriage, motherhood, and domestic life, although there is little doubt that early training may develop in some a suitability which would otherwise remain unsuspected.  When, however, early training fails to bring out any inclination toward these things, we may well consider seriously before we exert the weight of our influence toward them.  Home-mindedness shows itself in many ways, and it should have been a matter of observation years before the girl faces the choice of a vocation.  It is usually of little avail to attempt to turn the attention of the girl who is definitely not thus minded toward the domestic life.  On the other hand, the girl who is naturally so minded will respond readily to suggestions leading toward the occupations which require and appeal to her domestic nature.  The great majority of girls, however, are not definitely conscious of either home-mindedness or the opposite.  They are in fact not yet definitely cognizant of any natural bent.  It is these girls who are especially open to the influence of environment, of what may prove temporary inclination, or of false notions of the advantage of certain occupations in choosing a life work.  These are the girls, too, who are likely to drift into marriage as they are likely to drift into any other occupation, and whose previous vocation may have added to or perfected their homemaking training or, on the other hand, may have developed in them habits and traits which will effectually kill their usefulness in the home life.  These, then, are the girls who are most of all in need of wise assistance in choosing that which may prove to be a temporary vocation or may become a life work.  The temporary idea must be combated vigorously in the girl’s mind.  Many an unwise choice would have been avoided had the girl really faced the possibility of making the work she undertook a life work.  The temporary idea makes inefficient workers and discontented women.