the magnitude of which can only be appreciated by comparing it with the varying position of woman from the time she was considered property and bought and sold like cattle down to the present time. While this change in the social and industrial status of woman is an advantage and thousands of women are now happy in earning a comfortable living for themselves, many helping to support others as well, there is a phase of working life that is anything but hopeful. The revelations made by those who have patiently investigated the condition of the lower class of working women in the large cities-the sewing-women, the cigar-makers, the great army of the unskilled-are appalling. Merely to read of the hardships these women undergo in the awful struggle for a bare existence makes the head swim and the heart fail. The interference of legislation here and there and the strenuous efforts of philanthropists are measures ridiculously insufficient to cope with the flood of poverty, degradation, oppression, and wickedness. These terrible conditions seem to be principally the result of unrestricted emigration and of overcrowding in the large cities. There, where existence is worth the least, the struggle for it is the fiercest. Under the present system of competition can we blame a starving woman for underbidding her neighbor on work, that she may have the wherewithal to buy bread? Can we blame the manufacturer for buying his labor in the cheapest market? Yes. Better starve than snatch the bread from a starving sister. Better die in poverty than to make money out of the suffering of a fellow creature. But this is high doctrine and few can attain unto it. But what of a social system under which such alternatives are inevitable and which is daily crowding helpless women further down in want and misery in spite of all efforts to help and uplift? It is doomed. How will a change be wrought? Peaceably, we have reason to hope. By force, we have reason to fear. What will it effect? A social condition in which every man or woman willing to work shall have a chance to live. One obvious lesson to be drawn from a hasty survey of the field of woman's work is that every woman who desires to be self-supporting should aim to attain skill in her chosen work. She should learn to do whatever she has to do as well as it can be done. If in a place where there is no chance for advancement, no opportunity to do better work and to earn more money with the passing years, it will be worth a present sacrifice to place herself where she will have such opportunities. This will take time and strength for those who have drifted into the wrong channel, but it will pay. For those who can choose their calling and prepare for it the field is wide. Time and money spent in fitting for a congenial and useful occupation is a good investment for every woman who can possibly compass it. The questions every woman seeking employment has to meet are, "What do you know?" "What can you do?" This demand for competency is growing more imperative daily. It is those who know and who can do who have employment and good pay. The welfare of all demands that every worker shall do the best that is in her, as every step upward leaves a place below to be filled by another and lessens by so much the state of congestion among the unskilled. Not to every woman is it given to be a preacher or a teacher, not all can organize and plan, but there are numberless humbler tasks that as truly meet the world's need. The less inspiring the work in itself the greater the need of carrying to it the best qualities of the worker. The manner in which some women dignify every kind of work they do is a revelation. What we deem commonplace or menial becomes noble under the touch of their interest and enthusiastic effort. The oft-repeated statement that it necessarily lowers a woman to enter the working world and to toil side by side with men is an unwarrantable assumption and a libel on both men and women. A refined, dignified, gracious woman will carry those qualities with her wherever she goes, while a rude, silly girl will be quite as unrefined and frivolous in the home as in the shop or office. In the business world there is no room for childishness, peevishness, or willfulness, and in the discipline of working life many a woman has learned self-control and a certain consideration for the rights of others she would otherwise have missed. In order to make her own way a woman needs to have a stout heart. She must not be easily overcome by difficulties nor expect that her path will be smoothed by poetic justice. She must learn to take people and things as they are instead of fretting because they are not as she would like to have them, and if she is wise she will cultivate the habit of looking on the bright side. She must realize that superficial knowledge and hasty, imperfect, slipshod work will not do, that weariness and disgust before the battle is half won will not do, that nothing but application and patient, thorough work will bring her satisfaction or success. It is to be deprecated that since it has become common for young women to become self-supporting, the greed of gain has so taken hold of some that girls are willing unnecessarily to sacrifice an education for the work that will bring them a few dollars a week pin money, leaving the school for the store, factory, or office. Parents ought to realize, if the girls do not, that for working people the only time to obtain an education is while young, and that two or three extra years spent in acquiring knowledge will broaden the girl's outlook for life and make her a happier and wiser woman. The working girl's life is a crowded one. Many "keep house" in a small way and make most of their own clothing in addition to their daily work of from eight to ten hours. Unless the love of knowledge and the taste for good literature is gained in school there will be little time or desire after working life begins for the pursuit of that culture which has been so well defined as knowing "the best that has been said and thought in the world." With such a taste an active force, no life is barren, no matter how full of monotonous toil. The poorest are rich in the legacies of mind and heart left for mankind by the thinkers and poets of all ages. The pity is these legacies so often go unclaimed, while the toil and the care of life and the deceitfulness of poverty narrow the mental and spiritual vision until the worker fails to see that "the life is more than meat and the body than raiment." The habit of church attendance, although kept up with difficulty and at a sacrifice, will serve to keep a door open into the intellectual and spiritual world, and thousands of working women can testify to the uplift received from their weekly glimpse of truths that at once rest and stimulate. It would be well if every worker could carry into the daily routine the inspiration of these words of Carlyle's: "The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!" NOTE.-Different phases of this subject are fully treated in the following books: Women Wage-Earners, by Helen Campbell. Prisoners of Poverty, by Helen Campbell. Woman's Work in America, by Annie Nathan Meyer. The Power of Mother's Influence. MRS. SUSAN S. FESSENDEN, President Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of Massachusetts. ROFESSOR Drummond, in his lecture on "The Evolution of Motherhood," says, "All the machinery, all the preceding work of nature, is to the end that she may produce a mother. The work itself is one of the most stupendous processes of nature. The mother is the ultimate object of the evolution of the animal kingdom. Nature has never made anything higher." At last, from the lowest form of life, at the command and according to the law of the Author and Controller of evolution, a mother exists. It yet remains for the world to evolve a higher and still higher type of motherhood. The sweetest, purest, strongest, most unselfish relationship in life is that of mother. God intended that this should be so. To this end is the little infant laid so helpless, the most helpless of all the animal creation, into the arms of a mother, who has gone down into the depths to receive it, and who should rise to the mount of selfpurification and self-abnegation that she may promote its prosperity and happiness. That is a thrilling little story of the mother who was lost upon the mountain. When the snow fell and the fierce winds howled, and the cold penetrated, "She stripped her mantle from her breast |