women have always done between the period of formal schooling and marriage, they must in the new industrial conditions learn how to do this useful work in the manner now demanded. The trade school for girls has entered the field of education and it has come to stay. It is not yet, however, adequately correlated with the rest of the schooling which girls receive, and there are sad duplications and sadder chasms in the education of which the trade school is but a part. Some time we shall be wise enough, both in the interest of boys and of girls, to work out a general plan of education which will fit for no one class condition exclusively or demand that one know in advance just what one wants to do in order to get the best of the school opportunity. Some time we shall be able better than now to determine what elements of education are so universal that all children must have them, what so specialized that only certain classes need them, and how to fit the specialized elements of training into the general scheme in order that the same person can profit by both equally. Meanwhile, as we stumble along, in a few experiment stations of the new education an industrial training is now given to girls which tends toward the general home usefulness outlined above, and which gives that tendency at the early period when it is most required. Where this is being attempted with any success it is already clearly seen that such processactivity is a valuable central interest around which to group arithmetic, language, the art-side of education, history, and ethical suggestions of self-control and social usefulness as well. Just in the same way agricul

ture in its simple forms, and the care of domestic animals, have already proved master interests in the early training of boys, around which to correlate all the studies of the elementary school.

Meanwhile, also, the growing attention to tradeteaching and vocational preparation of girls for selfsupport has started currents in education which, when not confused (as they so often are) by leaving until too late a period the general process-activity which leads toward domestic life, promise to make it vastly easier for all girls to earn their living in better ways, under better conditions, and for better pay, within a generation of American life.

More and more, as we are working out a consistent theory of education in general for boys and girls and for youth of both sexes, a sure instinct is enriching the curriculum of colleges and universities in which women are students by the insertion of courses which are intended to fit them both for the position of womanhead of a family of social leadership, and for those professional careers which lie nearest the home life. Books are being compiled to show how educated women may fit themselves for other employments than teaching, and the courses in household science and economy are now made to cover a wide range of vocational training for many important professions. Perhaps the most important sign of the times in this direction is the recent action of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ commending this enlargement of the college curriculum.

In regard both to the vocational training of girls

which must follow immediately upon graduation from the elementary school, and that which can be obtained. through the high school and college, certain main points of guidance may be noted. If women as a sex are generally to be confronted with a vocational divide at marriage, then it stands to reason and common sense that they will choose, and their parents for them (where no special talent is indicated), such training as will serve best for both personal self-support and family usefulness: that is to say, the trades needing shortest preparation for wage-earning, and the professions most nearly allied to general culture, will be the most popular in the educational choices for girls. This is understood in the case of the girl who must begin wage-earning early in so far as it relates to preparation for factory and shop work in the occupations nearest in locality to her home and demanding least time for acquiring technique.

We have not yet reached the point where any wellconsidered plan is being wrought out in school experimentation for the training of girls for specialties of wage-earning in activities required by the home-life itself. If the domestic help problem is to be solved we must solve it along the lines so well and thoroughly outlined by Professor Salmon in her valuable studies; that is to say, we must put the help within the family on as democratic a plane as service outside the family, and adopt, as far as the exigencies of family life allow, the "hour-system" and the "out-living" instead of the "in-living" of domestic helpers. If we are to 'Lucy P. Salmon, Ph.D., Domestic Service.

get for domestic service the same type of girl v now enters the shop or factory, the counting-room office, we must make the conditions equally attracti to the self-respecting girl who has had some education. in the public school. The belief that any system on such a basis can regulate the family life as the factory and shop may be regulated has been already disclaimed. The woman-head of the family must be able and willing, in the overwhelming majority of cases, not only to organize, but personally to do whatever work is necessary for the well-being of her family. No woman-head of a family of average means and condition can utilize an hour system or any form of domestic service which can be adjusted to the demands of educated and self-respecting helpers, unless herself both competent and ready to serve in similar ways. The tendency of the world of organized industry is to lessen the amount and variety of household work by the outside preparation of foods, the mechanical inventions for cleaning, etc., and the easy access to supplies of all sorts. The burden of the house-mother who does not and will not shirk her main responsibility is thus much eased. The need for some assistance and in many cases for much assistance to the housemother during the years when her children are young still remains and grows to a condition of acute suffering and mal-adjustment in country districts and in manufacturing towns in which "hired help" is beyond the reach of most women in the years of married life when they need it most. We have accepted too supinely the alternative of no help or help all the time.

We have neglected to consider the middle course of partial help from younger girls which might be made both efficient and suitable for the worker, if we but added to our trade-teaching some specialties of childcare, house-care and sick-care, such as a healthy girl of sixteen to eighteen years could well do if only she knew how. For the average house-mother of small means but good intelligence and willingness to serve her family at first hand, two to four hours a day of competent help from those whose breeding made them fit companions for her children would be a greater assistance than a longer period from those whom she had to watch and direct at every moment. When the managers of modern trade schools for girls have been asked why they did not fit for family service, they have usually had in mind in their answers the ordinary "going out to service" which is the inherited form of domestic helping. What we need now is an extension of the general tendency toward home-usefulness which may be given in the elementary school along lines that are sufficiently differentiated for technical training, and which would fit the girl of fourteen to sixteen to do › some one thing needed by the household well, and for pay, on terms as carefully outlined as those which underlie employment in the shop and factory. This extension of trade teaching, when tried in even the smallest experiment by Young Women's Christian Associations and like volunteer efforts in the educational field, has shown that it is not the work in the home that drives the "best girls" from it, but the lack of democratic organization of household labor and the lack