The solution of woman’s present industrial problem is not an easy task, but out of the present unsettlement certain facts are emerging with a good deal of clearness.  The efficiency in production, secured by concentration and specialization, make it certain that the old-time home with its multiplied industries will not return, but that more and more even of its present lessened activities will be transferred to factories and to their equivalents.  It is also certain that women are not going to be supported in indolence by men, because when deprived of the discipline which full participation in life gives, they must always degenerate.  For themselves, and for the sake of their children, they will demand a chance to live abundantly.  It is also clear that our present chaotic conditions are destructive of health, happy marriages, effective homes, and the strong line of descendants which must always be the chief care of an intelligent society.

In the first place, then, we must work to produce an entire change in our present mental attitude toward organized industries.  Our present worship of industrial products, no matter how obtained, must give way to a recognition of the fact that the chief asset of a nation is its people; that a woman is more important than the clothes she makes in factories or sells in stores; and that to needlessly destroy or scrapheap a working woman is worse than to needlessly destroy or scrapheap the finest and most costly machine ever devised by man.  Such a statement seems to carry conviction in its every phrase, but the fact is that we do not believe it, and until we do believe it, there will be little help for our present absurd and wretched conditions.  Unregulated competition, backed by greed of individuals and groups, will go on wasting the wealth of women’s lives until we cease to be fascinated and hypnotized by the display of products which they make possible.  Better fine women and children, and few things, than stores and warehouses crowded with goods, and the women and children of our present factory towns.  By fixing our attention on people instead of things, we should almost certainly secure more and better things; but, regardless of cost, we must change the focus of our attention.

In the second place, girls must get ready to be women.  The education of the home and the school must be unified, and together they must give a training that will lead girls into the actualities of the life that lies before them.  Our present elementary schools, and still more our high schools, lead girls neither to intelligent work nor to intelligent living as women and mothers.  Up to at least the age of fourteen, the education should be general, looking to the development of all the powers of body, mind and sensibilities.  But through all these eight or ten years of training, two factors should receive constant and intelligent attention.  In the first place, we should realize that we are not fitting women for drawing-rooms nor