Arts and crafts. This somewhat elastic term we use to include a wide range of occupations which have to do with articles of use or ornament which are handmade and which require skill in designing or in carrying out designs.  Embroidery, lace making, rug and tapestry weaving, basketry, china painting, wood and leather work, handwork in metals, bookbinding, and the designing and painting of cards for various occasions are familiar examples of this kind of work.  Photography, map making, designing of wall paper and fabrics, costume designing and illustrating, making of signs, placards, diagrams, working drawings, advertising illustrations, book and magazine illustrating, landscape gardening and architecture, interior decorating, are other lines offering work to men and women alike.

The range of work here is no greater than the range of qualities which may be happily and usefully employed in arts and crafts.  All branches of the work, however, are alike in demanding a certain degree of artistic sense and deftness of manual touch.  An accurate, observant eye is an absolute essential, and, for all but the lowest and most mechanical lines of work, imagination, originality, and an inventive habit of mind make the foundation of success.  In some lines a fine sense of color values must underlie good work, in others the ability to draw easily.  All work of this sort requires the ability to do careful, painstaking, and persevering work.  Given this ability and the artistic sense before mentioned, the girl’s work may be determined by some special talent, by the special training possible for her, or by the openings possible in her chosen line of work within comparatively easy access.

[Illustration:  Photograph by C. Park Pressey A youthful farmer.  The Census figures for the year 1910 report one-fifth of all women employed in gainful occupations as engaged in the pursuit of agriculture and animal husbandry]

Agriculture. The Census figures which report one-fifth of all women gainfully employed as engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry are somewhat startling until we observe that southern negro women make up a very large number of the farm workers reported.  Even aside from these, however, there are many women who are finding work in gardening, poultry raising, bee culture, dairying, and the like.  The girl who is fitted to take up work of this sort is usually the girl who has grown up on the farm or at least in the country and who has a sympathy with growing things.  She is essentially the “outdoor girl.”  She must be willing to study the science of making things grow.  She must be able to keep accounts, that she may know what she is doing and what her profits are.  Above all, she must have no false pride about “dirty work.”  Properly such a girl should have entered upon her career even before she has finished her formal education, so that “going to work” means merely enlarging her work to occupy her time more fully and to bring in as soon as possible a living income.