of her Home Assistant.  Work must be scheduled and planned ahead, the home must be run on business methods if the system is to succeed.  I heard this explained to a group of women not long ago.  After the talk, one of them said, “Well, in business houses and factories there is a foreman who runs the shop and oversees the workers.  It wouldn’t work in homes because we haven’t any foreman.”  She had entirely overlooked her job as forewoman of her own establishment!

“Suppose I have company for dinner and the Home Assistant isn’t through her work when her eight hours are up, what happens?” some one asks.  All overtime work is paid for at the rate of one and one-half times the hourly rate.  If you are paying your assistant twelve dollars for a forty-four-hour week, you are giving her twenty-eight cents an hour.  One and one half times this amounts to forty-two cents an hour, which she receives for extra work just as she would in the business world.

“Will these girls from offices and stores do their work well?  They have had no training for housework unless they have happened to do some in their own homes,” some one wisely remarks.  The lack of systematic preparation has always been one of the troubles with our domestic helpers.  It is true that the new type of girl trained in business to be punctual and alert, and to use her mind, adapts herself very quickly to her work, but the trained worker in any field has an advantage.  With this in mind the Central Branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association in New York City has started a training-school for Home Assistants.  The course provides demonstrations on the preparation of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and talks on the following:  House-cleaning, Laundry, Care of Children, Shopping, Planning work, Deportment, Efficiency, and Duty to Employer.  This course gives a girl a general knowledge of her duties and what is even more important she acquires the right mental attitude toward her work.  The girls are given an examination and those who successfully pass it are given a certificate and placed as Trained Home Assistants at fifteen dollars a week.

The National Association would like to see these training-schools turning out this type of worker for the homes all over the country.  This is a constructive piece of work for women to undertake.  Housewives’ Leagues have interested themselves in this in various centers, and the Y.W.C.A. will help wherever it can.  There are always home economics graduates in every town who could help give the course, and there are excellent housekeepers who excel in some branch who could give a talk or two.

The course would be worth a great deal in results to any community.  The United States Employment Bureaus are also taking a hand in this, and, with the cooeperation of the High Schools, are placing girls as trained assistants on the new basis.  I have talked with many women who are not only using this plan to-day but have been for several years.