Practical Suggestions
for
Mother and Housewife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents

CHAPTER I

Her Freedom. Culture a desideratum in her choice of work. Daughters as assistants of their fathers. In law. In medicine. As scientific farmers. Preparation for speaking or writing. Steps in the career of a journalist. The editor. The Advertising writer. The illustrator. Designing book covers. Patterns.

CHAPTER II

Teaching. Teaching Women in Society. Parliamentary law. Games. Book-reviewing. Manuscript-reading for publishers. Library work. Teaching music and painting. Home study of professional housework. The unmarried daughter at home. The woman in business. Her relation to her employer. Securing an increase of salary. The woman of independent means. Her civic and social duties.

CHAPTER III

Nature's intention in marriage. The woman's crime in marrying for support. Her blunder in marrying an inefficient man for love. The proper union. Mutual aid of husband and wife. Manipulating a husband. By deceit. By tact. Confidence between man and wife.

CHAPTER IV

Element in choice of a home. The city apartment. Furniture for a temporary home. Couches. Rugs. Book-cases. The suburban and country house. Economic considerations. Buying an old house. Building a new one. Supervising the building. The woman's wishes.

CHAPTER V

Essential parts of a house. Double use of rooms. Utility of piazzas. Landscape gardening. Water supply. Water power. Illumination. Dangers from gas. How to read a gas-meter. How to test kerosene. Care of lamps. Use of candles. Making the best of the old house.

CHAPTER VI

The qualities to be sought in furniture. Home-made furniture. Semi-made furniture. Good furniture as an investment. Furnishing and decorating the hall. The staircase. The parlor. Rugs and carpets. Oriental rugs. Floors. Treatment of hardwood. Of other wood. How to stain a floor covering.

CHAPTER VII

The carpet square. Furniture for the parlor. Parlor decoration. The piano. The library. Arrangement of books. The "Den." The living-room. The dining-room. Bedrooms. How to make a bed. The guest chamber. Window shades and blinds.

CHAPTER VIII

Nursing the child. The mother's diet. Weaning. The nursing bottle. Milk for the baby. The baby's table manners. His bath. Cleansing his eyes and nose. Relief of colic. Care of the diaper.

CHAPTER IX

The school child. Breakfast, Luncheon, Supper. Aiding the teacher at home. Manual training. Utilizing the collecting mania. Physical exercise. Intellectual exercise. Forming the bath habit. Teething. Forming the toothbrush habit. Shoes for children. Dress. Hats.

CHAPTER X

The mother's duty toward herself—Her dress. Etiquette and good manners. The Golden Rule. Pride in personal appearance. The science of beauty culture. Manicuring as a home employment. Recipes for toilet preparations. Nail-biting. Fragile nails. White spots. Chapped hands. Care of the skin. Facial massage. Recipes for skin lotions. Treatment of facial blemishes and disorders. Care of the hair. Diseases of the scalp and hair. Gray hair. Care of eyebrows and eyelashes.

CHAPTER XI

The prevalence of good receipts for all save meat dishes. Increased cost of meat makes these desirable. No need to save expense by giving up meat. The "Government Cook Book." Value of the cuts of meat.

CHAPTER XII

Texture and flavor of meat. General methods of cooking meat. Economies in use of meat.

CHAPTER XIII

Trying out fat. Extending the flavor of meat. Meat stew. Meat dumplings. Meat pies and similar dishes. Meat with starchy materials. Turkish pilaf. Stew from cold roast. Meat with beans. Haricot of mutton. Meat salads. Meat with eggs. Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Corned beef hash with poached eggs. Stuffing. Mock duck. Veal or beef birds. Utilizing the cheaper cuts of meat.

CHAPTER XIV

Prolonged cooking at low heat. Stewed shin of beef. Boiled beef with horseradish sauce. Stuffed heart. Braised beef, pot roast, and beef a la mode. Hungarian goulash. Casserole cookery. Meat cooked with vinegar. Sour beef. Sour beefsteak. Pounded meat. Farmer stew. Spanish beefsteak. Chopped meat. Savory rolls. Developing flavor of meat. Retaining natural flavors. Round steak on biscuits. Flavor of browned meat or fat. Salt pork with milk gravy. "Salt-fish dinner." Sauces. Mock venison.

CHAPTER XV

Various recipes arranged alphabetically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

What a tribute to the worth of woman are the names by which she is enshrined in common speech! What tender associations halo the names of wife, mother, sister and daughter! It must never be forgotten that the dearest, most sacred of these names, are, in origin, connected with the dignity of service. In early speech the wife, or wife-man (woman) was the "weaver," whose care it was to clothe the family, as it was the husband's duty to "feed" it, or to provide the materials of sustenance. The mother or matron was named from the most tender and sacred of human functions, the nursing of the babe; the daughter from her original duty, in the pastoral age, of milking the cows. The lady was so-called from the social obligations entailed on the prosperous woman, of "loaf-giving," or dispensing charity to the less fortunate. As dame, madame, madonna, in the old days of aristocracy, she bore equal rank with the lord and master, and carried down to our better democratic age the co-partnership of civic and family rights and duties.

Modern science and invention, civic and economic progress, the growth of humanitarian ideas, and the approach to Christian unity, are all combining to give woman and woman's work a central place in the social order. The vast machinery of government, especially in the new activities of the Agricultural and Labor Departments applied to investigations and experiments into the questions of pure food, household economy and employments suited to woman, is now directed more than ever before to the uplifting of American homes and the assistance of the homemakers. These researches are at the call of every housewife. However, to save her the bewilderment of selection from so many useful suggestions, and the digesting of voluminous directions, the fundamental principles of food and household economy as published by the government departments, are here presented, with the permission of the respective authorities, together with many other suggestions of utilitarian character which may assist the mother and housewife to a greater fulfillment of her office in the uplift of the home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

THE SINGLE WOMAN

Her Freedom—Culture a Desideratum in Her Choice of Work—Daughters as Assistants of Their Fathers—In Law—In Medicine—As Scientific Farmers—Preparation for Speaking or Writing—Steps in the Career of a Journalist—The Editor—The Advertising Writer—The Illustrator—Designing Book Covers—Patterns.

The question of celibacy is too large and complicated to be here discussed in its moral and sociological aspects. It is a condition that confronts us, must be accepted, and the best made of it. Whether by economic compulsion or personal preference, it is a fact that a large number of American men remain bachelors, and a corresponding number of American women content themselves with a life of "single blessedness." It is a tendency of modern life that marriage be deferred more and more to a later period of maturity. Accordingly the period of spinsterhood is an important one for consideration. It is a question of individual mental attitude whether the period be viewed by the single woman as a preparation for possible marriage, or as the determining of a permanent condition of life. In either case the problem before her is to choose, like Mr. Hathaway's heroine, "the better part."

The single woman has an advantage over her married sister in freedom of choice, of self-improvement, and service to others. Says George Eliot of the wife, "A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts." The "bachelor girl," on the other hand, has virtually all the liberty of the man whom her name indicates that she emulates.

To the unmarried woman, especially the one who may subsequently marry, education in the broad sense of self-culture and development is of primary importance. The question of being should take precedence over doing, although not to the exclusion of the latter, for character is best formed by action. But all her studies, occupations, even her pastimes, should be pursued with the main purpose of making herself the ideal woman, such an one as Wordsworth describes, one with:

It is an obviously true, and therefore a trite observation, that no one, woman or man, should consider that education (using the term broadly) stopped with graduation from school or college. But the statement that a grown person who has not settled down to some particular life work, such as is often the case with a young unmarried woman, should continue at least one serious study, will not be so generally accepted or acceptable. Yet in no other way may that mental discipline be obtained which is necessary to the mature development of character. Neglect to cultivate the ability to go down to the root of a subject, to observe it in its relations, and to apply it practically, will inevitably lead to superficial consideration of every subject, and even ignorance of the fact that this is superficial consideration. As a practical result, the person will drift through life rudderless, the sport of circumstance. She will act by impulse and chance, and be continually at a loss how to correct her errors. The shallowness with which women as a class are charged is due to the fact that, their aim in life for a considerable period not having been fixed by marriage or choice of a profession, they do not substitute some definite interest for such remissness, and so form the habit of intellectual laziness.

The study which an unmarried and unemployed woman should pursue may be anything worthy of thought, but preferably a practical subject at which, if necessary, the woman is ready to earn her living. Many a family has been saved from financial ruin by a daughter studying the business or the profession of the father, and, upon his breakdown from ill-health, becoming his right-hand assistant, or, in the case of his death, even taking his place as the family bread-winner. In these days when farming is becoming more and more a question of the farmer's management, and less and less of his personal manual labor, a daughter in a farmer's family already supplied with one or more housekeepers may, as legitimately as a son, study the science of agriculture, or one of its many branches, such as poultry-raising or dairying, and with as certain a prospect of success. Ample literature of the most practical and authoritative nature on every phase of farming may be secured from the Department of Agriculture at Washington, and the various State universities offer special mid-winter courses in agriculture available for any one with a common-school education, as well as send lecturers to the farmer's institutes throughout the State.

To give examples of women who have made notable successes at farming and its allied industries would be invidious, since there are so many of them.

Studies that look to the possibility of the student becoming a teacher are preeminent in the development of mentality. The science of psychology is the foundation of the art of pedagogy, and every woman, particularly one who may some day be required to teach, should know the operations of the mind, how it receives, retains, and may best apply knowledge. An essential companion of this study is physiology, the science of the nature and functions of the bodily organs, together with its corollary, hygiene, the care of the health. From ancient times psychology and physiology have been considered as equally associated and of prime importance. "A sound mind in a sound body" is an old Latin proverb. The need of every one to "know himself," both in mind and body, was taught by the earliest "Wise Men" of Greece. The Roman emperor Tiberius said that any one who had reached the age of thirty in ignorance of his physical constitution was a fool, a thought that has been modernized, with an unnecessary extension of the age, into the proverb, "At forty a man is either a fool or a physician."

The study of psychology is a basis for every employment or activity which has to deal with enlightenment or persuasion of the public. The person who would like to become a speaker or writer needs to begin with it rather than with the study of elocution or rhetoric. The first thing essential for him to know is himself; the second, his hearers or readers—what is the order of progress in their enlightenment. Even logical development of a subject is subsidiary to the practical psychological order. Formal logic, the analysis of the process of reasoning, is a cultural study rather than a practical one, save in criticism both of one's own work and another's. More cultural, and at the same time more practical, is the study of exact reasoning in the form of some branch of mathematics. Abraham Lincoln, when he "rode the circuit" as a lawyer, carried with him a geometry, which he studied at every opportunity. To the mental training which it gave him was due his success not only as a lawyer, but also as a political orator. Every one of his speeches was as complete a demonstration of its theme as a proposition in Euclid is of its theorem. Lincoln once said that "demonstration" was the greatest word in the language.

Delineation of character is the chief element of fiction, and herein literary aspirants are particularly weak, especially the women, far more of whom than men try their hand at short stories and novels, and who are generally without that preliminary experience in journalism which most of the male writers have undergone. It is not enough for a novelist to "know life"; he must also know the literary aspect of life, must have the imaginative power to select and adapt actual experiences artistically. Young women who write are prone to record things "just as they happened." This is a mistake. Aristotle laid down the fundamental principle of creative work in his statement that the purpose of art is to fulfil the incomplete designs of nature—that is, aid nature by using her speech, yet telling her story the way she ought to have told it but did not. This is his great doctrine of "poetic justice."

The writing of children's stories is peculiarly the province of the woman author, and here, because of her knowledge of the mind of the child, she is apt to be most successful. The best of stories about children and for children have been written by school-teachers. Of these authors a notable instance was the late Myra Kelly, whose adaptations in story form of her experiences as a teacher to the foreign population of the "East Side" of New York will long remain as models of their kind.

Journalism is a sufficient field in itself for a woman writer in which to exercise her ability, as well as a preparation for creative literary work. The natural way to enter it is by becoming the local correspondent of one of the newspapers of the region. In this work good judgment in the choice of items of news, variety in the manner of stating them, and logical order in arranging and connecting them should be cultivated. The writing of good, plain English, rather than "smart" journalese should be the aim. Stale, vulgar and incorrect phrases, such as "Sundayed," and "in our midst," should be avoided. There are two tests in selecting a news item: (1) Will it interest readers? (2) Ought they to know it? When by these tests an item is proved to be real news that demands publication, it should be published regardless of a third consideration, which is too often made a primary one: Will it please the persons concerned? This consideration should have weight only in regard to the manner of its statement. When the news is disagreeable to the parties concerned, it should be told with all kindness and charity. Thus the facts of a crime should be stated, who was arrested for it, etc.; but there should be no positive statement of the guilt of the one arrested until this has been legally proved. Many a publisher has had to pay heavy damages because he has overlooked, or permitted to be published, an unwarranted statement or opinion of a reporter or correspondent. But even though there were no law against libel, the commandment against bearing false witness holds in ethics.

The woman at home may also become a contributor to the newspaper. Her first articles should be statements of fact on practical subjects, such as the results of her own or some neighbor's experiments in a household matter of general interest, or reminiscences of matters of local history that happen to be of current interest. Thus when a new church is erected, the history of the old one may be properly told. Here the amateur journalist may practise herself in interviewing people.

After such a preparation as this, one may confidently enter the active profession of journalism as a reporter, preferably upon the paper for which she has been writing. Since in entering any profession opportunity for improvement and advancement in it is the first consideration, the young reporter should cheerfully accept the low salary that is paid beginners. There is no discrimination on account of sex in the newspaper world. Copy is paid for according to its amount and quality, regardless of whether it was written by a woman or a man. Women labor here, as elsewhere, under physical disabilities in comparison with men, and yet in compensation they have the advantage over men in their special adaptation to certain features of newspaper work, such as the interviewing of women, writing household and fashion articles, etc. There are more chances for this kind of special work in large cities, and here the aspiring newspaper woman may go, when she has proved her ability.

Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who stands in the front rank of newspaper women, has tersely stated the duties a woman reporter must undertake and the sacrifices she must make, as follows: "The woman who wishes to be a newspaper reporter should ask herself if she is able to toil from eight to fifteen hours of the day, seven days in the week; if she is willing to take whatever assignment may be given; to go wherever sent, to accomplish what she is delegated to do, at whatever risk, or rebuff, or inconvenience; to brave all kinds of weather; to give up the frivolities of dress that women love and confine herself to a plain serviceable suit; to renounce practically the pleasures of social life; to put her relations to others on a business basis; to subordinate personal desires and eliminate the 'ego'; to be careful always to disarm prejudice against and create an impression favorable to women in this occupation; to expect no favors on account of sex; to submit her work to the same standard by which a man's is judged."

The salaries earned by women as reporters are, with a few notable exceptions, not large. As low as $8 and $10 a week are paid to beginners; from $15 to $25 a week is considered a fair salary, and $30 a week an exceptionally good one for a woman who has not received recognition as a thoroughly experienced reporter.

It is from the ranks of newspaper women who have gone to the large cities and made a name for themselves as capable reporters that the editorial staffs of the magazines are recruited. As a rule they obtain their introductions by magazine contributions chiefly of special articles on subjects in which they have made themselves experts. The salaries of these positions range from $25 a week for assistant editors to $50 and upward for the heads of departments.

Book publishers employ women of this class to edit and compile works upon their specialties. Quite a number of women in New York earn several thousand dollars a year each at such work, while continuing their regular editorial labors.

Many newspaper women drift naturally into advertising writing, which is well-paid for when cleverly done. Since the goods chiefly advertised are largely for women, women have the preference as writers of advertisements. Then, too, manufacturers and advertising agents pay well for ideas useful in promoting the commodities of themselves or their clients. Here the woman at home may find out whether she has special ability as an advertising writer, by thinking out new and catchy ideas for the promotion of articles which she sees are widely advertised, and mailing these to the manufacturers. It is well if she have artistic ability, so that she may make designs of the ideas, though this is not essential.

It is the advertising columns of the newspapers and magazines, even more than the reading matter, which give a demand for work in illustration. To the woman who has talent rather than genius in drawing, illustration and commercial art afford a far safer field, in respect to remuneration, than the making of oil-paintings and water-colors. If ability in drawing is conjoined with ability in designing and writing advertisements, the earnings are more than doubled. Since payment for the individual drawing is more customary than employing an artist at a fixed salary, illustrating and the designing of advertisements can be done at home. There are many young girls just out of the art-school who earn from $25 to $50 a week by such "piece-work."

Akin to this work is the designing of book-covers, for which publishers pay from $15 to $25 each.

Of a more mechanical nature is making the drawings for commercial catalogues, and the prices paid are low, $9 a week being the rule for beginners. Designers of patterns, etc., for various manufacturers receive a similar amount at first. They may hope, after several years of experience, to rise to $25 a week, or possibly $30 or $35.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

THE SINGLE WOMAN

Teaching—Teaching Women in Society—Parliamentary Law—Games—Book-reviewing—Manuscript-reading for Publishers—Library Work—Teaching Music and Painting—Home Study of Professional Housework—The Unmarried Daughter at Home—The Woman in Business—Her Relation to Her Employer—Securing an Increase of Salary—The Woman of Independent Means—Her Civic and Social Duties.

Teaching is a profession that is particularly the province of the unmarried woman. The best teachers are those who have chosen it as their life-work, and have therefore thoroughly prepared themselves for it. A girl who takes a school position merely for the money that there is in it, expecting to give it up in a year or so, when she hopes to marry, is inflicting a grievous wrong on the children under her charge. There are other remunerative employments where her lack of serious intention will not be productive of lasting injury. Lack of preparation for teaching generally goes with this lack of intention, doubling the injury. Against this the examination for the school certificate is not always a sufficient safeguard, since many girls are clever enough to "cram up" sufficiently to pass the examination who have not had the perseverance necessary to master the subjects they are to teach, not to speak of that interest in the broad subject of pedagogy, without which the application of its principles in teaching the various branches is certain to be neglected. Enthusiasm in her profession, a whole-hearted interest in each pupil as an individual personality should characterize every teacher, for next to the mother, she plays the most important part in the development of the coming generation.

There is a general complaint that the salaries of school-teachers are too low, measured by the rewards of persons of corresponding ability in other professions. When, however, the certainty of pay and the virtual assurance that the employment is for life if good service is rendered, are considered, together with the respect accorded the teacher by the community and the fact that her work necessarily tends to the cultivation of her mind, the lot of the school-teacher must be reckoned as one of the most favored. Americans are more prone than any other people to spend money on education, and this spirit is ever increasing, so that the school-teacher is more certain than the member of any other profession that she will be rewarded worthily in the future. The establishment of the Carnegie pension fund for retired college professors is an indication of this growing spirit, as well as the recent advance of the salaries of public school teachers in New York City and elsewhere, in recognition of the increase in the cost of living.

To the bright woman who is interested in the study of civics, political economy, and sociology, there is opportunity to earn a living at home by organizing classes in these subjects among the club-women of her town. Teachers of parliamentary law are in especial demand. The organization of a mock congress for parliamentary practise is the most entertaining as well as the most improving play in which women can join. There is also a demand among women who seek an intellectual element in their recreation for instruction in the games of bridge-whist, whist, and chess. Bridge-whist is the most popular, largely because of the desire to win money and valuable prizes at the game. Then, too, a greater amount of time is spent at it than is legitimate for recreation. For moral reasons, therefore, the teaching of it cannot be recommended. Straight whist is also played occasionally for money, but this practise, happily, is rapidly becoming obsolete. Chess, except among professionals, is played purely for sport, and is therefore the best of games to study. Unfortunately there is very little demand for instruction in it by women; nevertheless, it is the best of all games for cultivating the analytical power of the mind, a faculty in which women, as a rule, are weak.

This power may, with equal pleasure and greater profit, be gained by paying special attention, in the reading of books and magazines, to literary style and construction. The average reader assimilates only a small percentage of what he reads. The careful thought which the author puts into his manner of presentation, no less than into the matter, is appreciated by very few of his readers, and by these only to a limited extent. Especially is this true of fiction. If one wishes to become an author, he should first cultivate this power of criticism, always accompanying the study by exercises in reconstruction of faults in the author read. Thus, wherever a sentence appears awkward in expression, the reader should revise it; wherever there is a seeming error in the logical development of a subject, or the psychological development of a fictitious character, he should reconstruct it. Nothing is so helpful to a writer as self-criticism. Thus Mrs. Humphrey Ward has recently confessed that the happy ending of her "Lady Rose's Daughter" was an artistic error, false to psychology, her heroine being doomed to unhappiness by her character. After creating his characters, and placing them in situations where their individuality has proper scope for action, the author must let them work out their own salvation. A thoroughly artistic work is marked throughout by the quality of "the inevitable," and for this the reader should always be seeking. There is no surer indication of shallowness than the desire to read only about pleasant subjects and characters and events. It is akin to the habit of ignoring the existence of everything disagreeable in life, which Dickens has satirized in his character, Mr. Podsnap. And "Podsnappery" exists among women even more than among men, because of their more sensitive emotional nature. If women are to join with men in making the world better, they must not blink at the misery and vice about them, and the evil elements in human nature and society which produce these. To be good and brave is better for a grown woman than to be "sweet" and "innocent," in the limited sense of these terms. A woman, like a man, should, "see life steadily, and see it whole."

The foundation of a critical habit in reading has a practical bearing, inasmuch as it is a direct training for the positions of book-reviewer and manuscript reader for magazine and book publishers. Since women read more than men, the woman's view of a manuscript is often preferred by publishers. Therefore there are more women than men in the position of literary adviser. These are paid salaries ranging from $25 to $50 a week. Manuscripts are read by the piece for from $3 to $5 each. Book reviews are paid for at all prices, from the possession of the book alone to the payment of a cent a word. It is best for the aspiring critic to practice herself on book reviews first. In these she can with profit display her power to analyze the artistic construction of books, and so develop her abilities as a manuscript reader.

The knowledge of books and the ability to digest their contents are necessary to the making of a library worker, an employment which the great increase in libraries, through the benefaction of Andrew Carnegie and others, is offering to thousands of American women. The salaries are low, but in considering entering upon the work, weight should be given to the opportunities for literary knowledge and culture it affords and its refined surroundings. The making of a descriptive catalogue of the home library, using the card index system, forms an ideal test for the young woman who is uncertain whether she has the taste and ability required in this sort of work. To the student in the home, even though she intends to follow some other vocation, such as teaching or writing, such an inventory of her intellectual store-house will be invaluable. It matters not how small the library is, for "intensive cultivation" is as profitable in mental culture as in agriculture.

Even such accomplishments as music and painting are most cultural when pursued as if the intention of the student were to teach them. Knowledge of technique and of the methods by which its difficulties are overcome is the foundation of all appreciation of art. The only true connoisseur is the one who can enter into the delight felt by the artist in creating his work. Exercise leads to invention. The ancients well said that the contortions of the sibyl generated her inspiration. Critics have been sneeringly defined as "those who have failed in literature and art," but this is not true of the greatest critics, who never carried their creative work to the point of success simply because they had found a better vocation in criticism before reaching such a point. What a loss to the world it would have been had Ruskin developed into a painter, even a great one, instead of the master interpreter and teacher of painting that he did become!

Household employments, such as cooking, needlework, etc., as vocations for the unmarried woman, no less than the married, need only be mentioned here, as their appropriateness for the girl at home is obvious, and they are fully discussed elsewhere in this series. It should be suggested, however, that the greater leisure of the unmarried woman enables her to try experiments in these subjects while the married housewife is too fully occupied by the routine of her duties to undertake them. Indeed, if a woman become a notable cook after marriage, it is often a sign that she is not a notable wife or mother.

It is an old saying that,

By the common bond of sex, a daughter is her mother's natural companion in sympathy, however separated from her in distance. Therefore, when she lives at home, what a special obligation is there to be her mother's comfort and dependence! Even though she acquire greater skill in household affairs, she should still resign herself to the subordinate place of assistant.

The thought that she is becoming useless is the chief dread of a woman who has been a managing worker all her life, and her daughter should carefully avoid bringing this to her mind, indeed, should so act that the ageing mother retains the management of the house, even though her labors diminish. In respect to the direction of children, the elder daughter should take a hint from the manner in which the school-teacher supplements rather than supplants the mother in her care of the young people, leading to a difference in the kind of regard which these feel for them. The sister should always consider herself simply as the eldest, most experienced of the children, and so the natural monitor of the group, and, when necessary, the mediator with the parents.

In a similar fashion the unmarried woman should act toward her neighbors who are wives and mothers. In matters where the interests of children and households are of chief concern she should resign the leadership to the married women, and, after them, to the professional teachers. Religious, social, and civic matters, wherein as a church member and a citizen she is on an equal footing with wives and teachers, afford her ample scope for exercising her instinct for leadership.

Every unmarried woman who lives alone should, whether or not she possess an income, have a vocation. Earnings and wages are not alone good in themselves, but are an additional gratification, in that they supply a proof that the earner's service is of worth to the world. Some day, when social conditions are so adjusted that economic competition is really free, and wealth cannot be obtained save by service, money will be a proper measure of standing in the community. It is all the more a duty now, both to herself, her class, and to society, that the woman who works should contend to the last cent for her part of the wealth that is created by the business in which she is engaged. Where her work is equal to a man's, she should contend for wages equal to his; where it is inferior, she should be willing to accept less; where superior, she should demand more. In these matters women are apt to be either too complaisant or too clamorous. They should first be sure that they are justified in their claims, and then, if right, be firm in their demands, and, if wrong, be resigned to abandon them. The law of supply and demand acting in the labor market allots wages between workers with natural justice—certainly more equitably than the interested opinion either of employer or employee.

It will be seen that the woman in business needs to study the fundamental elements of political economy even more than the housewife. Books and magazines are filled with superficial, obvious advice as to the way in which women as employees should conduct themselves toward their employers and fellow workers, but rarely is there a hint given of the actual rights and obligations of these relations, upon which the proper conduct is based.

Employment is a business contract between employer and employee, in which there is no legal or moral obligation for either party to exceed the terms. Owing to an over-supply of labor, wages may be exceedingly low, even down to the starvation point, but for this condition the employer, if he be not also a monopolist, is not responsible. Indeed, as employer, his presence in the labor market as an element of demand raises the market wage. In fact, it is only by his increasing his business that he can raise wages. If he pay more to his employees than he needs to, or is profitable for him, this increase is not real wages, but a gratuity, something no self-respecting person likes to take. Some other class in society created this condition, and it is this class that the low-paid workers should blame, and, as citizens, take measures against, not the employers. Indeed, they should consider these as their natural allies in making better economic conditions.

Accordingly, the woman in business should have sympathy for her employer, who owing to the prevalent condition of shackled competition has troubles of his own. She should aid him by loyal, efficient work, thus, and only thus, establishing a moral claim upon him to recognize her loyalty in kind. Personal relations, except of this nature, should not be sought by the employee, particularly if she is a woman. Outside of the office or shop she may meet and treat her employer as a fellow citizen and member of society, under the common rights of citizenship and the proper social rules, but in business hours she should obey the strict ethics of business. Thus she may don what dress she will when her work is done, adopt all the eccentricities of fashion she pleases, but she should wear with cheerfulness, and even pride, the simple dress prescribed, for good and sufficient reasons, as her working costume. Even when no such regulations are made, her good sense and taste should lead her to adopt a modest, practical working dress, simple mode of arranging the hair, etc. This is always agreeable to customers, and it is by pleasing these she best pleases her employer.

Stenographers and secretaries have a special obligation to keep sacred the confidences of their employers. If they find that in so doing they are made instruments in perpetrating frauds on other business men, or the community in general, they have no right to expose these. Their only proper course is to resign their positions, holding sacred, however, the knowledge gained while acting as employees. It is only when formally relieved of this obligation by legal compulsion to testify in court that they may reveal this knowledge.

While it is the custom of an employer to demand references of the employee, and not give them for himself, the only safe course for a woman seeking employment is to look into the character of the man for whom she is to work, and the nature of his business. This she may do indirectly in the case of character, and directly in the case of nature of business. If the employer refuses to impart this, saying, "Your work will be to do whatever I ask you," it is a blind, and therefore dangerous contract into which you are entering, and you should withdraw from it in time.

When an employee has proved her efficiency, and has seen that it is producing an amount of returns to the business of which she is not receiving her proportionate share, it is her right and duty to ask for an increase in wages. If she fails to receive this, she should investigate the conditions in the labor market of her class, and guide her action accordingly. If she finds that there is a demand for workers of her ability at the higher wage, she should again proffer her request to her employer, with a statement of this fact. If he still refuses the increase, she should resign her position, upon proper notice, and seek employment elsewhere.

When the unmarried woman employs herself in free service for the public good there will be no need for her to contend for the proper returns, which will be the love and respect of the community, given her in full measure. In comparison with these rewards, the honors of club president and society leader, for which many women contend with a rivalry that surpasses in bitterness contests for political honors among men, are mean and empty. The words of the Master to His disciples, that he who would be first among them should be servant to his fellows, should be taken to heart by American women, before whom are opening new and vast opportunities for the display of pride and ambition no less than for modest, faithful service.