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 her own price if she specializes. In union shops she will work eight hours a day, and her employers must live up to all union regulations covering holidays, half holidays, overtime, etc. The conditions under which a proof-reader works are better than those in the average department stores, and not less sanitary than in the average office building. Neither is proof-reading a crowded trade, and the woman who has mastered it can make a place for herself. There are about six thousand union printers and proof-readers in New York, and it is said that not more than two hundred and fifty of these are women.

The girl who decides to take up proof-reading should have good health, or the nervous energy which, with women, is often a substitute for perfect health. She must have a thoroughly grounded education in English, though a college education is not essential. She should be what is termed a born speller and a mistress of punctuation. She must have a well-developed bump of accuracy, for inaccuracy is the unpardonable sin in a composing-room. While she must be accurate to the point of being mechanical, she must learn to recognize a mistake intuitively, rather than to follow copy slavishly. She should be a student of current events and keep in touch with all the movements and prominent people of the day. She must have the patience and grit


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 to endure a long and tiresome apprenticeship and the tact to secure the most rapid advancement consistent with union rules at the hands of the powers above her.

Having looked over the field and decided that she is not only suited to the work, but deeply interested in the mechanical making of books and magazines, she must find her opening. This is not easy to secure, for printers are, above all other union men, the most clannish.

A sincere friendship or a ripening acquaintance with a working typesetter or proof-reader, man or woman, is worth a dozen letters of introduction to the man who owns the shop. The foreman of the composing-room or the superintendent of the shop, if it be a large establishment, is an autocrat before whom even the proprietor bows. No girl wants to enter a shop to be tolerated, rather than advanced. Therefore let her make friends with practical printers.

The most successful, the best-paid women proof-readers are those who started at the printing-case, that is, set type. There is nothing about the trade they do not know, and their knowledge of proof-reading is built on the firm foundation of typesetting and all its correlative work. Perhaps the girl in the smaller city has the better chance to start at the case, where, by the way, she draws the munificent salary of

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 three dollars per week, or five dollars at the most, with a dollar raise from time to time as she becomes more adept. This is true because in the smaller cities linotype machines are not so common as in the great trade centers.

After many years of investigation of avenues open to working-women, I have reached the decision that in no other trade does the indidivualityindividuality [sic] of the woman, her very ego, count with such force as in securing an opening as proof-reader. She must make her presence felt among her associates. Only one woman in a thousand can step from the printing-case or the linotype machine to the proof-reader's table, and she must show a peculiar adaptability for the work. Her personality must triumph over obstacles peculiar to her trade.

On the other hand, for the woman who looks forward to a long career in the business or trade world, who finds a great and abiding happiness in surmounting obstacles, to whom success, hardly earned, is intoxicating (and there are many women of this sort to-day), proof-reading presents a most attractive field.

Perhaps the reader lives in a city of ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants, with its weekly or daily paper and a job printing shop or two. Let her go straight to the job printer himself or the foreman of the composing-room attached to the paper and ask for work. Nine chances out of ten


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 she will find no opening, but she must go again and again, until the foreman is convinced of her sincerity. If she cannot get a place on the composing force at first, let her see the editor of the paper, and ask him if she may not contribute news items, accounts of social affairs, school or college or church notes. Probably he will say that he cannot afford to pay her. Let her write for him anyhow, and get a foothold on that paper. If he has never had a "social department," she can build one up for him. To all appearances she will be working on the editorial end of the paper. In reality she will be keeping her eye on the foreman of the composing-room, and when he realizes that she works with enthusiasm, that she does the small thing well, that she is using the items of news as a stepping-stone to his department, he will make room for her just as soon as he can.

This does not sound encouraging, I admit, but a woman who now reads proof in an establishment which publishes many high-grade text-books in various languages, and receives a salary of forty dollars a week, started in precisely this way less than ten years ago. For the weekly edition of the paper she condensed the women's news for the entire week, and went up to the composing-room to watch the foreman "make up" her special department. She won over that individual, a crusty, old-fashioned


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 printer, by her enthusiasm, and finally he gave her a chance on his force. His staff was not large, though there was a job plant in connection, and he had time to give the girl individual attention. He had always read his own proof, assisted by the editor, but when this girl manifested a determination to master proof-reading it was gradually turned over to her. She worked in this shop for four years, the regulation length of apprenticeship, and when she received her union card she was drawing the munificent wages of eight dollars per week. But there was nothing about the trade she did not know thoroughly. More than that, she had learned the importance of cramming her brain with accurate general information. Ata glance she could tell whether the name of a prominent man was correctly spelled, whether the right initials or Christian name had been given also. If a political measure was brought into prominence, she read everything about it that she could find. If a small nation had come before the public, she studied up its history, geography and politics; in other words, she did what all successful proof-readers must do—she became a practical student with singular powers of concentration.

With her union card she went straight from her native city to New York, and in a short time secured an opening at the minimum union


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 wages in the publishing house where she is employed to-day. She soon realized that if she specialized in some way she would command a larger salary. She took a course in German, then one in French, and now she can read proof in either of these two languages. She says she means to take up Latin and Greek next—and this is a woman who started on a district-school education!

I asked her whether she thought proof-reading was really worth the consideration of women workers. She answered:

"Unless you take joy in wresting hard-earned success from what seems like a barren field, no. But if you want a career which will forever broaden and lead you into new avenues of thought and study, yes. With most women, unfortunately, proof-reading is purely mechanical, and becomes trying on the nerves, almost maddening in its monotony. It is only when you study with an aim of increasing your value to your firm that you are happy in your work."

Another successful woman in this line of work never set type, but started in a clerical position. She had a letter of introduction to the foreman of a large printing and binding establishment. He said there was no opening for her as a copy-holder, the position at which she wished to start. The girl asked desperately if there was not something she could do, no matter how small.


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 He said that if she had a head for detail she could keep track of proofs and other matters connected with his peculiarly responsible position—for a salary of five dollars a week. She jumped at the chance, and for nearly a year she worked thus, sorting proofs for him, keeping a record of everything that came to his desk or left it. And she did the work as if her life depended upon it. Never had his files been kept so well. When there was a chance for her to hold copy for an hour or two, he gave her the opportunity. This means that she held the original manuscript while the proof-reader held the proofs and read them aloud, the girl watching for mistakes.

When the copy-holder left to take a position as proof-reader with another firm, this girl took his place at eight dollars per week. She held the copy and attended to her clerical duties for four years, received her union card, and, as the firm's business had grown until more proof-readers were needed, she received the first position open. A simple tale of drudgery and persistency is hers, but the woman does not look at it that way. Every day she was learning. It was not a mere mechanical performance of duties, for she was constantly storing her mind with information on a wide range of subjects.

The girl who really wants to learn proof-reading can find a way—and she must find it


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 for herself. Let her cultivate men and women in the printing trade. Let her take anything she can get to do in a printing or binding shop, and work, everlastingly work; and then study as if she were back in school.

If she cannot afford to work for a small salary she must not think of this trade. She cannot secure full union wages for at least four years. But bear in mind that during all this drudgery on a small salary she is being educated. Her parents must pay for her tuition in art, in music, in stenography—and then she must fight for a living. In the hard training that leads to the position of proof-reader she pays out nothing, she is paid something, and when she receives her "card" her position comes with it. There is no uncertainty.

Many women ask me what books they should study to prepare for this work. A thorough grounding in English—grammar, spelling and rhetoric—is essential. An excellent book on the art is "Composition," by Theodore Low De Vinne, the dean of American printers. This book is recognized as the one authority by all printers.

Another branch of work in publication centers for which girls yearn is manuscript reading, or acting as assistant to the editor. Fully half the girls who have led a life of leisure, after leaving boarding-school or a fashionable


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 finishing-school, and who meet with sudden financial reverses, think they would succeed best as assistant editors.

"I have always read the best literature, and kept up in current magazines. I write a good hand, and I never grow tired of books. I understand that all editors have assistants who read things for them."

This is a sample letter, and a representative sample. Generally the writer adds that she "understands that editorial hours are short and editorial offices elegant and refined."

Who, oh, who is responsible for any such "understanding"? True, editors and publishers have large staffs of assistants, but each is a worker, and each must have some preparation for the work. The girl who has never seen the inside of a publishing house and who has never written a line for publication must have remarkable ideas regarding the needs of the editor who will pay her salary. And she, too, must serve an apprenticeship.

She will need a letter of introduction to some one well up in the firm, and this must be backed by a willingness to begin at the bottom. If she is very fortunate, she will be given an humble elerical position, that of manuscript clerk. This means, in a large concern, that all incoming manuscripts will be brought to her table or office. Perhaps a boy will open them; perhaps


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 she may be expected to do this herself; and they will pour in, hundreds in each mail delivery.

These manuscripts she will glance over, enter the name of the article, the title of the story, the date of its receipt and its disposition in a large book, not unlike a ledger. Then she will take a fresh envelope bearing the firm's name, place the manuscript in this, address it to the writer, and in the upper right-hand corner where the stamp should go she will write the amount of postage enclosed with the article by the sender. Then this manuscript and all its fellows she will toss into a big receptacle to be sent to the first manuscript reader. The stamps she turns in to the cashier. By and by, each manuscript or a report upon it will come back to her desk, and she must complete her record, writing in the record book whether the script was accepted or returned, and if returned on what date.

This is purely clerical, mechanical work, and it must be done accurately and regularly, for every time a writer reports a manuscript as lost, this girl must prove that the loss occurred after the article was turned over to Uncle Sam for its homeward journey to the writer.

How long the girl must do this purely mechanical work depends upon herself. In a large and important office, she serves a stern apprenticeship. Gradually, however, the first manu-


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 script reader, who may have been watching her work, will suggest that she take time to look over the scripts. Her instructions will be something like this:

"Do not send me any stories of more than 7,000 words or less than 1,700. We do not use them in this magazine. Do not send me any poetry or articles on cookery or the care of children. Do not send me any serials."

Here is her first opportunity to demonstrate her literary ability, her power of selection. From that day she takes special pains not to burden the manuscript reader with unavailable scripts. By and by she reads most of the articles and attaches to them little comments which save the first reader time and trouble. The latter goes on his or her vacation and suggests to the editor that Miss Blank, who keeps the manuscript record, is perfectly capable of doing the first reading. During that memorable fortnight Miss Blank works as she never worked before and probably never wili again. She must read the scripts and pass them on to the various editors, who, in turn, must pass upon their availability. And she must not send manuscripts to the wrong editors. She must display literary judgment and discretion.

If she makes a good record as a substitute, in time, when the first reader becomes an assistant editor, Miss Blank is promoted to the


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 vacant place. Later she, too, becomes an assistant editor and is admitted to the councils of the great. But, you see, she serves her apprenticeship here, as in any line of work that leads to real success. It does not represent hard manual work, but it represents concentration on the small things before she may be entrusted with the larger duties.


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Rh With deepening agony of quest The old entreaty: ‘Art thou He, Or look we for the Christ to be?’

“God should be most where man is least: So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag of form or creed To clothe the nakedness of need,— Where farmer-folk in silence meet,— I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic’s glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that ’s saved alone. Not on one favored forehead fell Of old the fire-tongued miracle, But flamed o’er all the thronging host The baptism of the Holy Ghost; Heart answers heart: in one desire The blending lines of prayer aspire; ‘Where, in my name, meet two or three,’ Our Lord hath said, ‘I there will be!’

“So sometimes comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries. The sphere of the supernal powers Impinges on this world of ours. The low and dark horizon lifts, To light the scenic terror shifts; The breath of a diviner air Blows down the answer of a prayer: That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt A great compassion clasps about, And law and goodness, love and force, Are wedded fast beyond divorce. Then duty leaves to love its task, The beggar Self forgets to ask; With smile of trust and folded hands, The passive soul in waiting stands To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, The One true Life its own renew.

“So to the calmly gathered thought The innermost of truth is taught, The mystery dimly understood, That love of God is love of good, And, chiefly, its divinest trace In Him of Nazareth’s holy face; That to be saved is only this,— Salvation from our selfishness, From more than elemental fire, The soul’s unsanctified desire, From sin itself, and not the pain That warns us of its chafing chain; That worship’s deeper meaning lies In mercy, and not sacrifice, Not proud humilities of sense And posturing of penitence, But love’s unforced obedience; That Book and Church and Day are given For man, not God,—for earth, not heaven,— The blessed means to holiest ends, Not masters, but benignant friends; That the dear Christ dwells not afar, The king of some remoter star, Listening, at times, with flattered ear To homage wrung from selfish fear, But here, amidst the poor and blind, The bound and suffering of our kind, In works we do, in prayers we pray, Life of our life, He lives to-day.”

but dream. I never knew
 * What charms our sternest season wore.

Was never yet the sky so blue,
 * Was never earth so white before.

Till now I never saw the glow Of sunset on yon hills of snow, And never learned the bough’s designs Of beauty in its leafless lines.

Did ever such a morning break
 * As that my eastern windows see?

Did ever such a moonlight take
 * Weird photographs of shrub and tree?

Rang ever bells so wild and fleet The music of the winter street? Was ever yet a sound by half So merry as yon school-boy’s laugh?

O Earth! with gladness overfraught,
 * No added charm thy face hath found;

Within my heart the change is wrought,
 * My footsteps make enchanted ground.

From couch of pain and curtained room Forth to thy light and air I come, To find in all that meets my eyes The freshness of a glad surprise.


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girl who must become a wage earner "at once" should not look to kindergartening as her field of school work. It is perhaps the most subtle branch of pedagogies. Its principles must be absorbed slowly. They cannot be swallowed at a gulp, as the average American girl tries to acquire her preparation in many fields of.

Kindergartening is a philosophy. Its founder, Froebel, built his methods upon the philosophy of right living and individuality in childlife. The girl who hopes to become a successful kindergartner must first build her own character according to that philosophy. It is not enough to love children, though this love is an important stone in your foundation for the work. You must be versed in the psychology of childhood. You cannot "cram" during kindergarten preparation. Neither can you make up deficiencies in your early education. You will require all your physical and mental powers to


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 master the new ideas presented in the training-school for kindergartners. You may enter a shop as a clerk and tread the pathway to financial success by way of experience and your early mistakes, but you cannot correct mistakes in the kindergarten.

A business college may grant you a diploma and send you out to plague future employers because you learned to form the pot-hooks of stenography before you had thoroughly mastered your spelling-book, but you cannot enter a training-school for kindergartners without passing preliminary examinations which will test severely your qualifications in high-school branches.

This introductory preachment is offered because I want to play fair at the beginning. The high-school girl who must make money immediately on graduation is wasting her time in building kindergarten plans and air-castles. The woman who has been a home maker and out of the school atmosphere for years cannot read a few books on kindergartening, buy a few games and open a kindergarten in a few weeks. But to the girl who is considering the matter seriously, who has time and money to take a thorough course in the work, kindergartening opens a field of self-support worth cultivating. The ambitious, business-like kindergartner does


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 not to have to remain on salary—she can have a school of her own.

First, what are the requirements for admission to a recognized training-school for kindergartners?

A high-school education or its equivalent at a private institution.

Second, what is required of an applicant for a position in the public kindergartens of large cities?

A two-year course at some representative training-school for kindergartners.

The would-be kindergartner must have a knowledge of music; both instrumental and vocal are desirable. She must have at her finger-tips a practical knowledge of botany, art, geography, mathematics and general literature. She must be of good character, even-tempered and self-controlled, neat in appearance, amendable to the red tape and the regulations of public-school systems, and she must possess above all things that indescribable gift, the power to attract, often called personal magnetism, and to inspire confidence in children.

The hysterical girl will never succeed as a kindergartner. The untidy girl has no place in this wonderful garden of children. The girl who looks beyond the month's work to salary day, and this to the exclusion of everything else, will not last in the kindergarten field.


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 Many girls have written to me that they understand that a college degree is necessary to secure a position in a first-class school. This depends entirely upon your interpretation of the term "first class." If you mean the public kindergartens (and there are no better fields of effort, no schools that pay better salaries in the long run), then the statement is incorrect. Principals of fashionable private schools demand a college degree from every applicant for a position, and in the public schools, if you desire to rise to the rank of supervisor or teacher in a training-school for teachers, the degree is essential. On the other hand, a girl is entirely safe in taking merely her two years of work at a representative training-school for kindergartners; and then, after she has established herself successfully as a teacher and has saved funds from her salary, she may take the special college course which will fit her for the post of training-school teacher or supervisor.

Now for the girl in a large city who is ambitious to become a kindergartner.

Investigate first the possibilities of the public-school system in your own town. There may be attached to your own normal school a kindergarten course. At the training-schgol for teachers in New York City, and in connection with the Girls' Normal School in Philadelphia, for instance there are kindergarten classes.


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 Here a girl may quickly discover whether she is fitted for the work. If there is no kindergarten training-school in your town, you can at least secure your preliminary high-school training there. Do not imagine that you can take a home-study course in the high-school branches, "cram" relentlessly, and then pass your preliminaries. In rare cases a girl might accomplish this feat, but it is safer to complete your high-school course in the usual way.

If the local board of education offers you nothing in kindergarten training, thenstudy the various fields carefully before you decide upon a training-school away from home. If possible, select a school which is heavily endowed or connected with some established university or college. The small, private training-school holds certain dangers for you. In the first place, its work may not fit you for the examination for positions in the public-school kindergartens, and in the second the small kindergarten training-school needs your money more than does the endowed institution, and its principal may not be entirely honest with you regarding your suitability for the work. By this I mean that at certain established institutions or training-schools your work from the very start is watched very carefully, and if you show that you are eminently unsuited to the work and the money which you would spend upon your tui-


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 tion would be wasted, you will be told so frankly, and advised to give it up, and even the fees you have paid in advance will be refunded to you. On the other hand, a training-school which is not endowed needs every cent it can secure from pupils, and the principal will often permit a girl to continue the work, knowing that her diploma will not insure her a position, and that the first supervisor under whom she works will mark her deficiencies.

Many girls from small towns write to me after this fashion:

"I have met a lady who runs a kindergarten here. She has a nice little school of her own, and she thinks I would make a fine teacher. She has offered to teach me the work very reasonably. Do you think I could secure a city position after taking such a trianing?"

It would be impossible to advise any girl to take such a course of training without knowing the kindergartner who has offered her the course at reduced rates. She may be a kindergarten enthusiast who has faith in her would-be pupil, sufficient faith to give her the training for practically nothing. Perhaps she wishes to train the girl as her assistant. In either case she will see that her pupil is trained as thoroughly as she was herself. But it is a matter of regret that many such offers are founded on the need of earning extra money; and the girl


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 who accepts them secures only a smattering of kindergarten methods and never gets to the root of Froebel philosophy.

"What will the training at a representative school cost me?" inquire many girls.

At one of the endowed institutions in the East, of whose graduates ninety-seven per cent. have secured positions, the charges are twenty-five dollars per term, three terms in the year, which means an outlay of seventy-five dollars per year for tuition. As the course runs two years, one hundred and fifty dollars, plus a small sum for personal supplies, will cover the actual expenses of tuition. Pupils at this school are furnished with lists of boarding-houses, where they can secure room and board as low as four dollars and fifty cents a week. At this rate a girl's living expenses, including laundry, will run about three hundred and fifty dollars for two years. A very strong girl can reduce expenses by working in a family night and morning for her board, but it is better to concentrate strength and interest on your training. The average training-school has a daily session, except Saturdays and Sundays, from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, with much field work, visiting kindergartens and teaching or substituting in charity kindergartens.

The girl who has no money for her training


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 must simply find some way of earning it. She can become a mother's helper and test her patience with children. Perhaps this experience may cure her of any desire to teach even in a kindergarten. If she lives in a college town she can become a caterer in a small wey and prepare college "spreads," or have a pretty tearoom in her own home, where the college girls may drop in for tea, sweets and chat every afternoon. She can do fine laundry work for college girls, mending, anything which will allow her to lay aside each week a small sum toward the expenses of the coveted training.

Other girls inquire: "If I do take a course of training, how do I know that I can secure a position?"

By the time you have spent two years in a training-school you will know where and how to secure a position. That is one fruit of the training. Furthermore, promising teachers from good schools are in demand. Authorities in the work say that for the next twenty-five years kindergartening will be a profitable field, because it will not be overcrowded.

"What salaries are paid kindergartners?" ask other girls.

In Greater New York the minimum salary paid kindergartners in the public schools is six hundred dollars. The maximum salary is twelve hundred and forty dollars. Salaries in-


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 crease with the term of service. Supervisors and teachers for training-schools command higher salaries, and the offices often go begging for lack of competent applicants.

It is impossible to name salaries in private institutions, as these vary according to the standing and prosperity of the school and the experience and capabilities of the applicant. In addition to private and public schools, free kindergarten associations and private charities afford openings. These relieve the congested condition in the public schools and aim to help the child who must be clothed and fed as well as taught. The summer vacation schools in large cities offer opportunities for special work to ambitious teachers, and a bright girl at a fashionable summer resort can easily form her own vacation classes among juvenile guests, and by working in the morning earn enough to pay her entire summer's expenses at the hotel.

Kindergartening is a profession, but mere knowledge of its philosophy, theory and practice will not make for success. Often the girl who might be described as a born kindergartner is outstripped by a girl who has less grounding in the philosophy but a better developed business instinct. Of all branches of pedagogy, probably kindergartening offers the surest avenue to economic independence, for it takes less capital to start a kindergarten than a full


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 fledged private school with many departments. The girl who wants to be her own mistress can become so through kindergartening—if she combines thorough training with good business management.


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planning a future of self-support a girl will do well to choose a trade or profession which is as yet uncrowded. She will avoid any field already filled to overflowing, all work to which other girls flock not by scores but by hundreds, thereby reducing not only the number of openings, but the standard of wages. She should not be content to study the various lines of work for women as they appear to-day, but as they will look a year, five years, ten years from now.

This is particularly true of the girl who plans to engage in educational or social work. Specialization and success are synonymous terms for the teacher or the philanthropic worker, but specialization in any study which may be discarded or abbreviated in public or private schools during the next five years is sheer waste of time.

Before taking any special course of training


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 as a teacher or social worker, study the tendencies of the schools or charities in that State where you expect to find employment. The newer educational movement is toward a readjustment of the curriculum to meet the peculiar needs of the twentieth-century child. Those who lead the movement maintain that we have been teaching the child how to study, but not how to live. We have been giving him the right for studying books, but the wrong methods of meeting life's stern problems. Educational prophets predict that during the next five years courses of study will fall like so many card-houses, and from the ruins will rise a beautiful new structure of practical schoolroom work in which hands and bodies, as well as minds, will be trained.

One result of the new eductional movement is a general awakening to the importance of introducing the domestic arts into public and private schools. Dressmaking, millinery, cookery, laundry work, general housekeeping and the eare of children and the sick will soon become features of every course in both city and rural schools. Whether it is true or not that the modern mother no longer trains her daughter in the domestic arts and that the girl must be taught home-making in the schoolroom or not at all, is a question quite apart from this chapter, but the fact remains that any girl who has


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 domestic instincts and the time to specialize as a teacher or a social worker, will make no mistake in taking a course in domestic science or the domestic arts.

Such workers are now in very serious demand and will be until the oncoming army of teachers realizes the importance of substituting such practical branches for the old classical or academic branches. Graduates from schools of domestic science or the domestic arts have no trouble in securing positions to-day. In fact, the position seeks the graduate if she has made any sort of record in the training-school. Boards of education all over the country and principals of private schools are looking for earnest teachers and supervisors, and one great mid-West city has announced that it will pay three thousand a year to the right woman for the post of supervisor of domestic arts in its public schools.

Ten years from now domestic science may be an overcrowded field. To-day it is practically uncultivated and offers many opportunities to the woman who takes special training along that line.

The graduate from a training-school for teachers like Teachers College, connected with Columbia University, New York, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, or Simmons College, Boston, is eligible for the position of teacher or supervisor


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 in city or country schools, or she may become matron of an institution, such as a home or orphanage or asylum or hospital; or she may teach domestic arts in settlement houses, Young Women's Christian Association classes, girls' friendly clubs, etc., or she may establish herself as a private teacher and demonstrator of cookery and dietetics, and travel from city to city, organizing classes. The domestic arts are on the verge of a revival, and rich and poor alike will come under the spell.

First—Domestic science for teachers.

Every first-class school of domestic science demands as the entrance qualification a high-school education or its equivalent. This means that it is practically useless for a girl who has never gone beyond the eighth grade to apply for entrance into a college where domestic science is taught as a special course. The course generally occupies two years, and the minimum cost of tuition is twenty-five dollars per term, three terms in a year, or $150 in all. During the first year the pupil studies elementary sewing, drawing and other manual arts, as well as various kitchen accomplishments, such as cookery, serving, laundry work, etc. At the end of the first year the student elects to specialize either on advanced domestic science alone or on advanced arts, such as dressmaking, millinery, basket-weaving, etc.


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 Those who elect domestic art must have shown during the first year more than ordinary artistic ability and hand skill, and they are prepared upon graduation to teach elementary and advanced handwork, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, embroidery and elementary cookery.

Those who elect domestic science are prepared to teach cookery, dietetics, marketing, serving, household accounts, household economics, including cleaning, laundry work and hygiene and sanitation for the elementary, grammar and high, public and private schools, colleges and technical schools, including training-schools for nurses; to be dietitians, supervising institutional housekeepers and caterers; instructors in elementary domestic art (handwork, including braiding, knotting, netting, crocheting, knitting, weaving, caning, basketry, hand and machine sewing, drafting and household furnishing) for the elementary and grammar, public and private schools, and wherever else elementary domestic art is taught.

To the uninitiated it would seem as if very little difference existed between the two courses, but in reality the domestic-science course appeals most strongly to the practical girl; domestic arts to the artistic or theoretical mind.

Salaries for this work vary. At an orphan asylum in New York City a teacher of domestic science or cookery receives thirty dollars per


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 month, in addition to being furnished with a nice private room and excellent board, and she is permitted to teach a private class outside the orphanage one afternoon in the week. A teacher of cooking, serving and domestic science in its elementary form in one of the model schools receives fifty dollars per month, while the supervising teacher of domestic arts, including many, forms of manual training for boys and girls, is paid $1,200 per year.

Positions as teachers of domestic science presuppose city life, and the country girl who has decided to take this course must realize that any position offered to her on graduation will entail her remaining in the city.

While not mentioned in the catalogue of any college, university or institute, the study of domestic science includes the development of the business instinct. Long before a student receives her diploma she realizes that she requires something beside mere knowledge to advance in her profession. She must have "push" if she will secure a desirable position and rise to the post of supervisor.

The private teacher of domestic science must overcome the prejudice of old-fashioned parents and the indifference of society-absorbed young women before she can hope to organize her class. She must develop some novel scheme of


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 instruction or surround herself with some unusual environment before she can attract the attention of matrons for whom the ordinary cooking-class has lost its charm. In one fashionable suburban town, a clever graduate, who had sent out circulars in vain, deserted the kitchen of her mother, where she had expected to teach, and rented a quaint, old-fashioned cottage, furnishing living-room, dining-room and kitchen with the last remnant of her inheritance. The living-room was for afternoon tea, the dining-room for luncheons, and the kitchen, furnished in Delft effects, was for lectures and demonstrations. In her tea and lunch-rooms she offered such dainty refreshments and such odd food combinations that pupils flocked to her lectures. She admits that had she sought to establish herself by ordinary methods she might have failed.

Another lecturer on domestic science has acquired great popularity in various States because of her apparent enthusiasm for the dishes for which each community is famous. In reality she is simply tactful and diplomatic. While she taught Northern cookery to Southern women, and vice versa, she left the impression that, after all, the specialties of each city or community were far superior to anything she had to offer. While she praised chicken gumbo in New Orleans, she did not pretend to teach her


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 class of Southerners how to make gumbo, but she did manage to secure many an old family recipe to bring back to her Northern pupils. When she found that in certain cities mistresses of homes took no interest in cookery or dietetics, she quickly announced classes for servants, and wealthy women subscribed in large numbers and sent their maids to the lectures.

In a mid-West city, a pioneer in domestic science tried in vain to establish herself as a lecturer and demonstrator, and finally when a salary of five dollars per week looked very desirable to her she accepted an offer from an editor of a local paper to conduct a household column on his woman's page two days in each week. Women began to write to her for advice on household questions, and she answered their questions conscientiously, in a happy, personal vein. To-day she has all the cooking classes she can handle, drawn largely from the ranks of the very women who had tossed her neatly-engraved announcement cards into the waste-basket. Another Western student of domestic science is now State Inspector of Foods.

For women who wish to do, rather than to teach, there is offered a special course, one year in length, known as the course in dietetics and housekeeping, designed to prepare women to become dietitians, matrons and skilled housekeepers for institutions. I quote from a cata-


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 logue of a school whose graduates are in great demand:

"It is essential that the applicants who desire to be dietitians, matrons or professional housekeepers be mature women of fair general training, with executive ability, experience in life, skill in practical housework, physical strength and endurance. Only such women as possess these qualifications, which are necessary elements of success in housekeeping, are advised to take this training for professional use."

This course prescribes two terms, three months each, of student work in the school, and three months of probationary professional service in any institution where the candidate for a certificate can find employment. In this respect it resembles the probationary period of the trained nurse. Among the studies are principles of cookery, dietetics, marketing, serving and accounts, physiology, chemistry, physical training, diet for children, diet for invalids, laundry work, household economics, fancy cookery, dietaries for families and general household sanitation.

Graduates from this one-year course are frequently employed as matrons in schools, homes and hospitals, where sanitary kitchens and properly prepared food are essential to the good—health of the institution.


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 Women often ask: "But how do I know that I can secure a position after I graduate?"

In learning any trade, there comes to you gradually the knowledge of how to secure work. It is part of your training. The modern school is a veritable clearing-house of energies, and in this process the girl who has graduated from a school with credit to herself and her alma mater generally steps directly into a position. But you must bear in mind that there are some women who, with a diploma in one hand and a bunch of influential letters in the other, would fail to secure a position because they lack personality. Diplomas must have the backing of patience, personality, enthusiasm and an earnest desire to "make good" in the first opening that comes your way.

If you lack the ability to make friends, and the gift of organization, do not study domestic science even to become a matron. The matron must organize a staff of servants and maintain discipline. She must know that others are doing their work properly, rather than drop into small routine duties herself. She must be dignified yet show by her instructions that she could do every stroke of the work herself.

"What will the complete course in domestic science, including board, cost?" inquire many correspondents.

That depends entirely upon the girl, her tastes


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 and her mode of living. The tuition (minimum) averages $75 per year of three terms. Board at $6 per week can be obtained in the neighbor—hood of the average institution where domestic science is taught, and this for the average school-year of nine months or thirty-eight weeks would amount to $228. There will be some incidental expenses, such as visiting institutions to study domestic economics in actual operation, outside lectures, etc. A graduate of such a course tells me that each pupil should allow at least $10 a week for board, clothing and in—cidental expenses.


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like domestic science, is one of the teaching branches which any girl who desires to specialize should consider for the good of both her purse and her health. It presents a field as yet uncrowded. As a special study it has its place not only in public and private schools, but it is right in line with all the new social and charitable movements, recreation parks and centers and public playgrounds, as well as the institutional church. It is particularly in demand at schools for deficient children, where teachers are paid exceptionally good salaries. It is ideal work for the girl whose health will endure neither long hours of confinement nor great nervous strain, and will, if combined with outdoor life, check incipient tuberculosis. Especially does it appeal as a source of income to the girl who does not want to leave her home city to face the overwhelming competition of the larger centers of population. The girl with a large circle of friends, the charm


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 of personality and a reasonable amount of training in a good system of physical culture can always make a moderate living in her home town.

Just at present there is also a very brisk demand for the teacher who combines with a knowledge of physical culture ability to teach dancing. In all the larger cities dancing, especially folk-dances, is being introduced into the public schools, recreation centers and playgrounds. This requires special training, but to the girl who has already mastered physical culture it will come quite easny.

Girls who think they would like to teach physi cal culture must first consider in what way they will utilize the specialty. The girl who hopes to teach in public or private schools will have to take a complete normal course, and a college degree will be most helpful in her advance to the post of supervisor. In many cities it will be essential. On the other hand, if she proposes to organize small private classes, combining dancing with physical culture, an abbreviated but earnest and thorough course, preferably with a good private teacher, will suffice, providing always that the girl continues to read and study every good work obtainable that deals with her specialty. Especially her studies of anatomy must be persevering and unceasing.

In New York City to-day sixty teachers are


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 employed to train the children of the public schools in physical culture. In the primary schools these teachers draw from eight hundred dollars to fifteen hundred dollars, and in the high-school grades from fifteen hundred dollars to three thousand dollars a year. In New York City the private schools were pioneers in this work, until what was considered as the privilege of the rich child was recognized as a necessity for the masses of children who had to be taught the use and care of the body as well as the mind.

Private teaching in New York is also lucrative. It is estimated that there are twenty-one hundred classes all told under the direction of fifteen hundred teachers, men as well as women. These classes are conducted at private schools and in gymnasiums, including the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. rooms and the settlements and parish houses of institutional churches. Presumably each of these fifteen hundred teachers makes a comfortable living, whether by teaching physical culture alone or by combining other special branches with it. Also the same teacher conducts classes in different schools, clubs or settlements, arranging a schedule of hours.

In order to teach physical culture in the public schools of New York City you must have had three years' experience as a teacher before you can take the entrance examinations. The ob-


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 ject of this rule is to maintain as high a standard for the teacher of physical culture as for any other branch of study. To secure positions in many of the private schools you must have a college education, precisely as would be required of a teacher of Latin, Greek or algebra. In other words, your education must be broad and liberal enough to entitle you to consideration for any branch of high-school or private school teaching. You cannot gloss over the defects of a grade-school education by an expensive course in physical culture. If you live in a community where your certificate must be renewed at stated intervals for general teaching, the certificate will be demanded if you try to teach physical culture. This explanation is offered for the benefit of the many girls who think that an abbreviated and defective education will be overlooked because they have taken a special course in physical culture.

In Philadelphia physical training is part of the normal course for girls, and is taught in all the public schools. In that city preference is given to graduates from the normal college. Chicago, Boston, in fact all the leading cities, have made physical training part of their public-school system, and all progressive small cities are following suit. A prominent teacher of physical culture states that he has requests from small cities the country over for teachers


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 and supervisors, and that the girl who is willing to go to one of these smaller cities and lead the movement in favor of physical culture can eventually become supervisor of the entire work in the public schools.

Naturally the teacher of physical culture who accepts a position in a public or private school at a stated salary enjoys a certain sense of financial security, and this step is generally taken by women qualified to hold positions in either public or private schools. On the other hand, some girls who have completed only a desultory course at a so-called finishing school but who are bright and well educated, through reading and observation, have taken up the study of physical culture thoroughly and have succeeded as private teachers.

The teacher who "free-lances," or organizes her own classes, must summon personality to her aid. She must make a strong appeal for her work, interest editors of local papers in physical training, and establish herself largely through the pleasing impression she creates. Later her methods of teaching may be commended. Her training of young people may show results. But at first she will win out on purely personal grounds.

I recall a young woman who made just such a struggle in a small Ohio city. She started out


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 with four pupils, two of those being children of a local physician, who recommended her class to patients with growing children in the family. Skillfully she mixed pleasure with physical culture, took her pupils on walking trips, with nature talks on the side, arranged games to be played after the lessons, and in fact scored a social success among young people.

Gradually her class grew, because children wanted to share the good times. Then she offered to supervise an entertainment for local charity, and for this purpose drilled a number of the elder brothers and sisters of her pupils. The drill was a success, and while the entertainment did not net her enough money to pay for the many rehearsals, it introduced her work to the general public and started an advance class. She worked in this fashion, barely making a living, for nearly two years, and then public sentiment demanded that she be given a chance to introduce physical training in the public schools. I cite this instance particularly to show that physical culture opens up possibilities in almost any city for the woman with sufficient force of character and personality to make her influence felt.

The teacher of physical culture who is a recognized authority in her community has no financial problems to solve. If an appointee in the


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 public schools, she has many opportunities to form evening classes among adults or teachers who desire to perfect themselves in this branch of teaching. She is invited to lecture for a fee during the winter in her own and neighboring towns, and she can accept engagements, if she so desires, for summer schools, etc.

A complete normal course in physical culture or elocution occupies two years. Special courses are given in both branches, but in physical-culture training particularly, a class course with regular practice is almost essential. A typical two-year course includes the following branches, and costs three hundred dollars:

Anatomy.

Apparatus.

Athletics.

Anthropometry.

Child Study.

Chemistry.

Eduction.

Histology.

Kinesiology.

Methods.

Physics.

Physiology.

History of Gymnastics and Physical Training.

Psychology.

First Aid.

Physical Diagnosis.

Gymnasium Administration.

Public-school Methods.

Personal and School Hygiene.


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Apparatus (light and heavy).

Athletics.

Delsarte.

Calisthenics.

Swedish Gymnastics.

Anthropometry.

Voice Culture.

Fencing.

Esthetic Gymnastics.

Games.

The average pupil allows ten dollars a week for board, laundry and incidental expenses, in addition to the three hundred dollars tuition. Girls often ask whether they can earn at least part of their training, and the head of one of the most successful training-schools tells me that a number of girls have paid their way by teaching outside classhours, the compensation being two dollars an hour. Naturally, it takes a bright, tactful, pleasing girl to secure this work.

Now as to securing positions after taking the course. The incidents related in preceding pages tell part of the tale, particularly for the girl who intends to form private classes. A position usually awaits the graduate of a normal course or school of high standing, as the number of cities introducing physical training in the public schools increases each year, and it will be some years before the supply equals the demand.

The girl who wishes to teach in private schools usually secures work through a teach-


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 ers' agency. Positions in institutional churches, settlements and among wealthy children or women who will join classes in light physical culture are secured entirely through acquaintance and influence.

The teacher who drops general work for physical culture, with a view to teaching in the public schools, particularly of a large city, confines her efforts to this one branch. The girl who expects to organize private classes or conduct classes in different private schools, settlements or institutional churches generally combines some other branch with physical culture, such as cooking, sewing or elocution. The latter is peculiarly suited for combination with physical culture, as the physical training gives grace to gestures, and a correct method of breathing is invaluable to the pupil in elocution; in fact, nearly every successful teacher of elocution includes in her class or private work simple gymnmastics, and Delsarte exercises. Just now dancing movements and steps play a large part in physical culture and elocution.

If, in addition to teaching the conventional elocution, she has the gift of story-telling, a girl can often secure engagements to entertain at parties.

Another line of work in which up-to-date elocution and physical culture teachers are scoring rather heavily this year is known as the general


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 culture class—teaching young girls how to enter and leave a room, how to carry themselves, how to sit correctly, how to meet strangers, how to cultivate a pleasing speaking voice, how to converse on general topics. This appeals to many girls who would turn a deaf ear to the appeal of physical culture or elocution alone.

The girl from a small city or town who goes to a larger center to secure her training in physical culture and who has a year's time and the funds to spare, should study dancing or elocution also. Armed with two specialties, she can appeal to a larger proportion of the young people in her home town and its environs than if she were limited to one sort of class work. With good instructors and her own concentration on the task to be accomplished, she can return home at the end of a year entirely capable of making her own way. As I have said so often in the course of this work, success lies in the girl as much as in the amount of her training. The head of a normal training-school of physical culture has pointed out to me student-workers in their third year who were not yet capable of leading a class, yet his course is supposed to occupy only two school years. Again, when a student has met with reverses after the first year, with a few additional private lessons she has been able to leave the school and teach with success.


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 The same is true of elocution and dancing. Some girls go to a dancing-class year after year and never acquire knowledge of the principles on which the art is founded. They may be graceful dancers but utterly unable to give instruction. Another girl with less natural ability but more genuine desire to succeed will be teaching children's classes while the others are still working. A girl who must teach elocution within a given time will walk straight past the girl whose father has the funds to give her an indefinite course of study and who likes to go back to the school, season after season.

In a small city, dancing-lessons can sometimes be organized more easily than those in physical culture. The latter classes are often less attractive to young people, but the teacher must never give up her aim, i.e., to introduce physical culture into her community and create a demand for it in the public schools.

The young woman starting her first dancing-class should select a hall with discretion, always giving her class a certain social standing. A large private parlor, with waxed floor or canvased carpet is preferable to a cheap hall in a questionable neighborhood. The girl without great influence will do well to secure social leaders as her patronesses and give a series of dances during the season which will have a little


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 air of exclusiveness. Some teachers call these cotillon clubs, dances de luxe, etc.

In starting her classes, the newcomer should teach adults the round and square dances, with an occasional special event, like a cotillon with inexpensive favors. The children—and their mothers—will want to have fancy dancing included in the afternoon's work. A girl who has not enough classes to keep her busy in her own town may be able to go to smaller towns within commuting distance for weekly or semi-weekly lessons.

The girl who combines elocution with physical culture must be resourceful and able to arrange amateur entertainments that give pupils a chance to appear with credit, and parents and friends an opportunity to admire and applaud. The girl who can stage-manage or produce small plays and allow other local talent to shine therein is very much more apt to succeed than the girl who casts herself for the star rele. Upon such little evidences of tact and good will does the teacher of physical culture and dancing or elocution build up remunerative classes. They are to be found in nearly all small cities, especially in the mid-West, West and Southwest.


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girl with literary ambitions belongs to one of two classes. Hither she thinks she could earn her living at home, by writing for magazines, or she wants to become a "journalist."

The profession of letters is broad and liberal. It presupposes a college education—yet I have known girls to graduate from the eighth grade into the short-stery field, because they found inspiration and help in the English masterpieces which they read after working hours. It presupposes leisure, elegant surroundings, and a restful environment, and yet one of the daintiest fairy-tales I ever read was penned by a woman between the time that she sent five growing girls off to school, and the washing of the breakfast dishes. I know of no work in which patient, persistent, unfailing effort and study bring such rich rewards, because the joy of giving birth to a new thought is equaled only by the joy of the mother in her first born. The writer extracts something more than mere dollars from


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 the profession of letters—the happiness peculiar to congenial work, intensified by steady, mental growth, and the development of resources within herself which rescue her from morbidness, loneliness and selfishness.

The successful writer must draw information and inspiration from her contact with human nature. She must know people in order to write of them, consequently she is never self-centered. She may become egotistical, spoiled by flattery when success is achieved, but during her probation she is dependent upon her fellow-men, therefore interested in them, and so is herself interesting.

Against this argument must be arraigned the stern fact that the woman who is entirely dependent upon her own efforts should not turn to writing, even though she may have the gift, as a profession in which she can secure immediate returns. She must combine writing with more practical work, something that will pay her board and keep a roof over her head until she wields the pen with such dexterity that financial returns are sure and regular. This period varies. Some women suddenly develop a gift for humorous versification, epigrammatic little essays, or a new field of fiction, and score phenomenal success; but as a rule the history of the writer who builds a substantial success reads far differently. My first story was writ-


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 ten—and promptly rejected—when I was fifteen. I drew my first weekly salary as a writer (and this on a small country paper) when I was twenty-seven, yet during that interval there was never a day, whether I was teaching school or cooking for hired men or catering to summer boarders, that I did not renew my determination, ofttimes buried deep beneath piles of unwashed dishes and unironed clothes, that one day I would be financially independent through my writings.

I make this question of financial independence the goal toward which most writers work because it is their real object, and because most of the women who write to me mention financial burdens which they hope to lighten by the aid of their pens. This introduction has been made strongly personal because I know that many of my readers will say that I paint too disheartening a picture for the girl with the pen. I want each one of these critics to know that I understand not only just how she feels in her ambitious, hopeful moments, but just how she will feel when manuscript after manuscript comes back—"Returned with thanks."

If the wolf is very close to your door, do not try to fight him with your pen. Better select for your weapon the needle, the frying-pan or the iron. He recognizes the power of the pen only when it is wielded by an experienced hand.


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 If you are willing to wait and work patiently and to live frugally, then find some regular occupation that will occupy half or three-fourths of the day, and devote the other half or fourth to writing, giving the early part of the day to your pen-work if possible. Depend upon serving or teaching or nursing, or whatever you can do well, to keep body and soul together, and do not expect your pen to yield returns for many weeks or months, perhaps years. But, on the other hand, if you keep the steadfast faith within yourself that some day you will reach your goal, your more practical work will be made lighter by your hours of writing, and life will be worth while.

First, cultivate your powers of observation. Keep your eyes open at home and abroad. Note what people around you are doing, their peculiarities of speech and their mannerisms. Study changes in nature's panorama. Open your mind to outside influences, to the happiness and the sorrow of those with whom you come in contact, so that in time you may express these emotions in such clear fashion that the world of readers will say: "Yes, I know a woman who acts just that way when she is frightened," or "Why, I have felt just like that ever so many times." You cannot picture human nature until you know it. The painter transfers to his canvas the thrush tilting on the swaying branch;


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 the writer must transfer to his sheet of paper the soul swaying under emotions.

Two home-going stenographers from a newspaper office passed a forlorn little figure sitting on the edge of the curbing of a city fountain. The girl's thin shoulders were shaken by silent sobs Her mouse-like teeth were set hard in her thin, colorless lips. The first stenographer who passed did not notice that the child was crying. In fact, she was thinking what a hot day it had been, and how hard it was to work in a great office amid the clickety-click of typewriters. The second girl, her eyes open to all that went on around her, despite the heat, spied the heaving shoulders, unlocked the hard-set lips and heard a story which led to the exposure of a great wrong, which placed the girl on the staff of a big paper, and which lifted her protége above want and misery.

Which one of those two girls hurrying away from the same office was the born writer? Fine phrases alone will not make a writer. You must cultivate the knowledge of human nature, the power of observation and the ability to put this combination of knowledge and observation into a word form which will reach the hearts of your readers.

Write every day. Write of everything you see. Cultivate the letter habit. If your friends enjoy your letters and beg for more, you are


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 making headway. Put into those letters your impressions of events and people. Divide your hours of reading between the works of standard English writers, like Macaulay, Carlyle, Dickens, Scott and Washington Irving, the books which are making the success of the moment, and the best current magazines. This last is important because you must know the trend of literary taste, the sort of fiction, special article or poetry that editors are buying.

If you seriously contemplate writing for a living, you must make a business of reading regularly at your public library or subscribing for the current magazines. If you have written a tale to entertain children, buy or borrow at the library every magazine you can find for juvenile readers, and decide which editor is using stories such as you have to offer. If you are offering practical suggestions for the housewife, make a list of magazines published especially for women, and send your script to each one, until many rejections have proven that it is not salable. A woman told me the other day that she had sent one story to twenty-nine magazines before she sold it.

If you have a love-story, study the magazines which publish fiction before sending forth the tale. Do not send it to The Review of Reviews or The Scientific American simply because your


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 brother happens to be a subscriber to one of these excellent but fictionless magazines.

The mechanical preparation of a manuscript is the simplest part of your work. Unless you write an extremely legible and uniform hand, have your script typewritten. The usual charge is ten cents per page, folio size. In the upper left-hand corner of the first page write your name and address in full. In the upper right-hand corner, write: "Submitted at your regular rates." Every publication has its rate for unknown authors. Only the established author names his own price. In the center of the sheet, below these corner inscriptions, write the title of your story.

Tell the typist who copies your story to double-space it. This leaves room for editorial corrections if your story is accepted. On the last page, four or five spaces below the last line, have your address and name written again. If you send out two or a dozen poems in the same envelope, put your name and address on each and every one. Do not trust that the typewriting or the long hand or the general style will identify them. If you send out a novel, mark each chapter with the full title and your name and address. If you could see the mail unloaded on the desk of a sorting clerk in a magazine office some morning you would understand this caution.


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 Do not ask for an immediate decision, nor acknowledgment by return mail. Simply enclose a self-addressed and stamped envelope for the return of your story if not available, and do not write a letter detailing the story of your own life and the reasons why you need the money this story is worth. The busy editor has no time to read this letter, neither is he conducting a charity bureau. His readers demand good, readable stories, not a poorly-written story, bought because you needed the money. Be sure to pay postage on your script in full, and fold it as few times as possible, using a large envelope for this mailing. Never roll a script.

When your story reaches the editorial offices in some far-away city, it will be sorted with dozens of others and recorded in a great book, then passed on to the young man or woman who is known as the first reader. If hopeless in style or unsuited to this particular magazine, it will be returned to you at once, with a printed slip of rejection. If it seems promising, it is passed, on to the second reader, or the editor for whose department it seems best fitted. He reads it, and, if favorably inclined, holds it for an editorial council, provided the magazine staff is large, or he sends it on the editor-in-chief. With hundreds of manuscripts pouring in every morning, you must understand that this process will take time. If you hear nothing after your


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 manuscript has been in the office a month, write a polite note of inquiry.

To the average woman who wants to write at home I would say: "Start with what are known as 'fillers,' little stories which are sandwiched in between the big features of a magazine for women readers." Perhaps you have found some method of lightening your housework, some new way of correcting a fault common to childhood; perhaps you have been to a lunch or tea and seen some novel decorations or enjoyed a novel game; perhaps your church society has given a new entertainment. Write of any of these matters, briefly and clearly, so that some other woman could lighten her housework, correct her child, give a pretty luncheon or plan a profitable church entertainment. Then look over the magazines for women and send this "story" to the one who seems to give considerable space to such matters. If the matter is used, you will be paid for it. Reputable editors never stoop to filching ideas, as some outof-town writers think.

Now for the would-be newspaper girl, "the journalist," as she would call herself.

The way to become a newspaper reporter is to report. Begin right where you are, where you will have friends to help you to gather news, and parents to provide you with a home until you learn whether newspaper work is all


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 that you have pictured it, and until the editor has learned that you have the true newspaper instinct. This will not take long. Here is one of the joys of newspaper work. You are not kept in suspense.

Remember the newspaper world wants facts, not phrases, and plan your interview accordingly. Do not take the editor an essay on "Architects of Fate." Tell him rather that Mrs. Brown had a tea-party the other night and his paper ought to publish the news about it; that the Smithson domicile is harboring brandnew twins, and that Jennie Piper is entertaining two pretty girls from St. Joe. He will ask you the girls' names, and if you do not know, he will say then and there that you are not so much of a newspaper woman as he thought you were. Tell him you know everybody and go everywhere and hear many, many things that somehow never get into his weekly paper, or, if you are fortunate enough to live in a town which supports a daily, that you think you could run a daily column or half column of society and personal news. That is the opening wedge for you girls with the pen—personalities, gossip, if you will. You cannot start by reporting murders or conducting household departments. You must begin by giving the editor something his older, more blase reporters have failed to give


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 him, the small trifling items that make a paper gossipy and readable.

If you are a newspaper woman born, you will succeed in your home town, I do not care what the size of the paper. You will create a demand for your services. If you cannot please the editor there, if you cannot induce your neighbors to give you news, what do you expect to do in a strange city with women to interview who place implacable butlers between you and the news you would learn?

By all means beg the editor of your home paper to try you out; and then make yourself invaluable to him before you try your wings in the great city.

You may have influential letters, you may have diplomas and pretty frocks and a prettier smile, but in a great city where you think there must be hundreds of openings you will find other girls with the same influential letters, good frocks, and pleasing smiles already on the ground, a hundred to every opening. And when you tell the city editor that you have had no experience but are willing to learn, he will inform you that he does not run a kindergarten for reporters.

Get your training near home, if you have to work months for nothing. I did this, and I have never regretted it, and just to clinch my argu-


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 ment I beg leave to drop into personalities once more.

Years ago in a mid-West city of 20,000 inhabitants and one daily paper, I found that I had to put my ability as a writer to more regular and better financial account. I called to see the editor of the one daily paper. He said his staff was complete, but I insisted on having something to do—just to show him that I could write. He said: "Go write up the squirrels in the park."

Now, natural history was so much Greek to me, but I had to convince him. I spent a morning in the park, watched the squirrels and talked with the watchman. The next Sunday that paper printed a column about the habits and tricks of the park squirrels—for which I never received a cent.

The staff was still full. If I had any new department or idea to suggest, "perhaps," said the editor vaguely.

The women's clubs were just then coming into prominence. I begged space for a department devoted to club meetings—and got it, with a salary of five dollars a week, providing the department made good. Can you imagine, you girls who want to write up sensational murders, the mad excitement of reporting a dozen or more literary meetings a week, and trying to make the matter readable?


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 My next assignment consisted of going from pastor to pastor each Sunday afternoon and finding church news for Monday morning's paper, sorting out routine announcements and digging relentlessly for some bit of real religious news. Next I was sent down on what was known as Implement Row, where agricultural machinery was handled, there to climb for one whole long day in each week over platforms and trucks and under freight-cars, often to be rewarded with less than a column of personal items about traveling men or out-of-town visitors. I worked so hard I scarcely had time to eat. And all the while that staff remained full! Men had the police run, the postoffice, the federal courthouse and the theaters—all of which I felt I could do, oh, so very well!

Those were shoe-destroying, soul-wearing days, but when I finally came to New York and was told by the city editor on a large paper to go down to the Battery and get a certain emigrant story, I thanked the good old mid-West paper and its patient staff of editors who had trained me to start for the Battery without asking the irritable city editor where the Battery was, how much copy he wanted, what I should ask the emigrant, etc. Those early days when I had had to squeeze news from the mere leavings of news-sources had taught me how to get a


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 story—and that is what makes a newspaper woman.

Now supposing that you have served your apprenticeship on a daily paper in a small inland city, how shall you approach the city editor in a large city, perhaps in Chicago, Philadelphia or New York?

First, you must have funds on which to live while seeking work in the city. It may be weeks or months before you secure a salaried position, and while you are doing space work at four or five dollars per column you must have money for board, room and earfare, to say nothing of the shoe-leather, on which reporting is merciless. Unless you have strong letters of personal introduction to city editors and have made a record for clever, not mediocre, work in your home town, never start for a strange city and a new, as yet unassured position, without at least enough money to meet your current expenses for two months.

Second, take with you every letter of introduction or recommendation that you can muster. Also carry a number of newspaper clippings, as evidence of the good work you have done on the home paper.

Third, be wise in selecting the season of your flight. Do not seek work in a large city during mid-summer. The reportorial force is generally cut down during the summer season, and


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 much of the space given during the rest of the year to articles on the various phases of city life is filled with correspondence from summer resorts. September is perhaps the best month in which to seek work in a city newspaper office, for at that time editors look kindly on new blood for their staffs.

Fourth, do not rush from the depot to the editorial sanctum. Study the city a bit and get your bearings. Incidentally, you may pick up some idea for a story which you can present to the editor during your first call. The girl who comes to the editor with an idea has ten chances where the girl who merely asks for work, for an assignment suggested by the editor, has one. The girl with ideas or suggestions for good stories is in demand.

A few words about the income of the young writer. Put out of your mind the fabulous earnings credited to novelists and playwrights. Remember that you are serving a literary apprenticeship, not writing the one "best seller."

If you are writing "fillers" for ten-cent magazines, you will be paid from a half to one cent per word. If you are writing little love stories, from 1,200 to 1,500 words, for the syndicates which supply fiction to the daily papers, you will receive about ten dollars per story. If you receive twenty-five or thirty dollars for your first 3,000-word fiction tale, you will be doing well.


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 Later, when you acquire style and reputation, you will be paid from seventy-five to two hundred dollars for a strong, telling story of action or psychological analysis. The income of the magazine writer is as uncertain as her moods. A period of great mental activity, which yields large financial returns, is generally followed by a mental reaction and a falling off of cash returns.

The income of the newspaper woman is more certain. In large cities the editor of the Sunday magazine section, first hope of the newly-arrived writer, pays five dollars a column for general material, more for special stories along exclusive lines with good illustrations. What is known as an exclusive special, not a news story, for a Sunday paper, the sort that will fill a page with text and illustrations, is sure to bring from thirty to fifty dollars.

A woman reporter without city experience may be asked to start at fifteen dollars a week. If she has good letters, or shows marked ability, or if her work in her home paper has attracted the attention of the city editor, she may be offered twenty dollars a week. From this point her salary is raised, according to her usefulness and efficiency, to thirty-five dollars a week. When she is worth this to the city editor, she generally asks to be put on space instead of salary, and then she earns, according to her


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 physical strength, working capacity and keenness of observation, from fifty dollars a week up.

In large cities the field of the newspaper woman is unlimited, for she soon finds openings in magazines for her keen stories of city life. But her daily life is not easy. It is strenuous, nerve-straining and harsh. Her hours are irregular, her work will not wait for a more propitious day or better weather, and the excuse has not yet been invented which will soften the heart or lighten the criticism of the editor when she scores failure.


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what occupation a girl may choose as a means of self-support, certain personal qualifications and business-like attributes are essential to her success. Mere training for a trade or profession, or mere education along technical or theoretical lines, will count for little if the girl does not possess the ability to employ her knowledge in the practical, business-like way.

The industrial, commercial or professional world needs the well-trained girl; yes, but more it needs the girl who has good common sense, the girl who is sincere, loyal and capable of concentrating on the work at hand.

And the greatest of these gifts is sincerity which is built upon common sense and which leads to loyalty and concentration.

When you first enter the business world you will meet many fellow-workers who pretend to do big things, to work hard and to have their employers' interest at heart, when, in reality,


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 they are simply making a superficial showing, and they are not working, not putting heart and soul into their work.

Be not deceived by their methods. Be sincere. Do your work so that each night as you pass the timekeeper or the cage in which sits the ule you can say in your heart: "To-day I have earned all that Mr. Blank pays me—and more."

These words are a satisfying chant, but if you simply make a pretense at working, there will be no song on your lips; rather a shaky feeling in your knees and a sinking in your heart not pleasant to feel. Whenever a girl tells me that she has an "easy" position, I mark her for a girl doomed for early dismissal. It is never really easy to earn your salary and incidentally work toward promotion.

Perhaps you do not understand just what I mean by sincerity in work, so let me give youa few concrete examples.

When you were in school you had to make a certain average in order to secure promotion. If you were not sincere in your work, when taking an examination you carefully selected the questions you could answer, and, once sure of making the average, you did not worry about the ones you had to leave unanswered.

Now that you are going into business, you think that here you can employ the same meth-


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 ods. You will start at five or six dollars a week doing simple, humble tasks; and you will do them just well enough so that your employer or the head of your department will not find fault with you. You will do what you are paid for—and not one jot more. You will not arrive at the store one minute ahead of time, and your eye will be on the clock-dial when the afternoon shadows begin to fall.

Not how much you can do in a day, but how little and still hold your position! Is this to be your gospel? You are not lazy, but soon you will belong to the great army of workers who are afraid of being imposed upon by their employers. You are getting ready to join the legions of underpaid girls and women.

Make no mistake about your abilities when first you are paid wages. Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred you will not begin to earn what your employer pays you, I do not care how small the salary. Your blunders will cost him money or customers. Your inexperience and the necessity for showing you how to do things in the firm's way will cost the time and the energy of some well-paid employee placed over you in authority. Your employer will not receive any returns for what he pays you for many, many weeks.

Late one afternoon I receive a letter from an out-of-town friend.


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 "Send me by return mail, please, five yards of percaline to line this silk."

"This silk" was an exqusite shade of pale green.

I rushed to the nearest store—the green silk was for a bridesmaid's frock, and the wedding day at hand—and I offered the bit of shimmery silk to a clerk.

"Five yards of percaline to match that, please."

"We ain't got any percaline like that," she said, listlessly dropping my sample. My glance traveled up and down the shelving, and lighted on a piece of palest green lining.

"What is that third bolt from the top?"

"That ain't percaline—it's shimmer satin."

"Well, I'd like to see it."

"It costs two cents more a yard than percaline," replied the clerk, not offering to take down the bolt, "and it ain't so heavy."

"I want to see it," I replied firmly, and I got it, not because of the clerk, but in spite of her.

Now, if she had been sincere in her work, if she had wanted to pay her employer for training her to earn her own living, she would have said to me:

"We have no percaline that shade, but I can give you a much better and softer lining at only a few cents more a yard."

But she was just hoping that I would not buy.


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 She wanted to make up her book and be ready to reach for her gloves and purse the instant the first bell rang.

Another instance:

"I can't understand why Jennie does not get along," murmured the mother of three girls, all wage-earners. "She was the brightest of my girls in school, always just slid from class to class without any apparent effort, while both Elizabeth and Helen had to work like Trojans, but now both of the tortoises are outstripping the hare. Jennie has been at Leyland's two years, and has had her salary raised just once, and that only a dollar a week."

This mother did not realize that the question which she propounded in one breath she answered with the next.

"She always slid from class to class without apparent effort."

That is the answer!

Jennie tried to introduce into the business world the same methods she had pursued at school. She was one of the clever girls who can skim through a lesson just before recitation hour, snatch at important points, and promptly forget all about them within an hour after school. She had a quick memory, but not a dependable, reliable one.

She never did anything thoroughly. What she did study failed to remain with her as per-


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 manent knowledge. She was distinctly superficial, and yet she always made a good appearance in her class. Teachers shook their heads and said it was a pity to see good gray matter wasted, but fellow-pupils envied her the faculty for securing results without real work.

For a time these tactics will make a good impression in business, but the time will be short. The girl who remembers orders for two or three days, but has to be reminded of them thereafter at regular intervals never scores a permanent success. The girl who writes instructions on a dependable memory, with an indelible pencil, lasts.

The girl who listens to about half the suggestions offered by her chief and then interrupts him: "Oh, yes, I understand perfectly. You want it done so-and-so," makes a very good first impression. The chief says to himself: "There's the sort of girl I like to have around. You don't have to furnish a diagram with your explanations."

But by and by he finds that this girl has only half grasped his instructions, while another girl who asked for fuller explanations was reinforcing her memory and had fully grasped the meaning.

The girl who "just slides through" never knows her stock if she is clerking; never has her employer's business terms at her finger-tips if


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 she is a stenographer; never takes the pains to find out why she is asked to do certain things in a certain way if she is employed in a factory.

She gives merely a superficial effect of being tremendously interested in her work. In reality she is thinking of something else. In the end it is the something else, not the work, that wins out.

Loyalty is a splendid business asset. It wins the respect and appreciation of your employer, while disloyalty causes dismissal and loss of self-respect.

It is not always easy to be loyal to your employer, especially if you are an inexperienced girl or woman.

Somehow, in the average man there exists an inborn sense of business honor. He rather prides himself on being silent about the affairs of the man or the firm for whom he works. He can accept reprimands without feeling a mad desire to retaliate by "knocking" his employers the first time their backs are turned.

On the other hand, women must acquire this sense of honor. Some do. Others talk too much, especally when smarting under a rebuke more or less deserved. Without meaning to be disloyal to employers, they steer close to the shoals of petty, dishonorable gossip, not realizing that the employee who is worth good money to her firm is the one who feels that the firm's interests are hers, and who, therefore, is close-mouthed.


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 Two girls, in ankle-length skirts, rode in an elevator with me not long ago, talking rather loudly, as inexperienced girls will. Said the blonde:

"How'd you like your new place?"

"Fine! Nothing to do hardly," replied the brunette. "I'm going to bring down a book from the library to-morrow. Say, you'd just die if you'd see him trying to find something for me to do. I don't see why he wants a stenographer, anyhow. Honest, it nearly gives me heart-failure when he dictates a letter. Wouldn't you hate to be married to a young lawyer?"

Then they both giggled, and several men in the car smiled.

That girl did not realize that in thus chattering of her employer's affairs in a public place she was disloyal to the man who paid her salary, but she was, just the same—disloyal, silly and unwomanly. Perhaps that struggling young lawyer kept a stenographer as part of the little business drama of keeping up appearances. Perhaps he hoped to secure business from the very men in the building who were riding in the ear with his foolish stenographer.

If you feel that you must laugh at your chief, wait until you are alone with your mirror or safely buried in the bosom of your family. I admit that some employers are more or less of


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 a joke, but don't jest about them in public or where eavesdroppers may hear your careless words and carry them further, to do harm to your employer and eventually to yourself. Your employer is straining every nerve to make his business succeed. Perhaps he is not working in just the right way, but it is not your place to shout this fact from the house-tops. Perhaps in time he may see the error of his methods and work out his business salvation on different lines. In the meantime if the you mean to accept a salary at his hands, be loyal to his interests, and do not criticize him to his friends or his rivals.

When you feel inclined to be disloyal, stop and figure on what you owe your employer.

Start your business career by honestly appreciating the privilege of being paid a salary during your training. The modern boy or girl knows little enough about being trained for work. In the old days of apprentices for trades, boys and girls worked from two to seven years for nothing or for board and lodging, in order to be prepared properly for wage-earning. To-day many girls with absolutely no equipment seem to think that employers ought to be glad to secure their inexperienced services.

Just get that idea out of your head. Bear in mind that the debt is all on your side. Be sincerely grateful to the man who gives you a


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 chance to prove your worth. You have then taken the first step on the pathway of success. In fact, your entire business future depends upon your understanding perfectly the relation between employer and employee.

Why are you going to work?

Because you need money! Otherwise do not go to work, because you will be a drone and a discredit to your sex in the wage-earning field. Moreover, you will be occupying a place that belongs to some girl who must work.

Why is your employer paying you wages?

Because he has work to be done. If you cannot do that work, he has a perfect right to find some one who can do it. Remember, he is not conducting a charity bureau.

Many a girl thinks that the world, as personified in her prospective employer, owes her a living. That is all wrong. The world owes you just what you are capable of earning. And when you have passed through the various stages of inexperience and incompetency to successful effort and a position of authority, you will look at the girls who come to you in search of work precisely as some one is looking at you to-day.

Be business-like even in applying for work.

Your possible employer wants to know if you can read, write, cipher, keep his stock in order and yourself presentable. If you can do these


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 things, and have an ordinary amount of intelligence, he knows that in time you will earn your salary.

He does not want to know that you need a new hat, or that your invalid brother needs a rolling-chair, or that your mother is ill and ought to hire a maid with your salary, or that your father has met with reverses. If any of these afflictions have befallen your family, you are welcome to spend your salary alleviating them; but the one important factor in this man's calculations is: "Will she do the work and do it well?"

Tell him what you can do or what you mean to do when you are trained for the work, and never mind how you expect to spend your salary. Talk of your talents, not of your troubles. Stand on your merit as a worker, and not on your needs. Then your employer will say: "Here is a business-like, self-reliant girl, and I need her."

Girls, earning your living is work—and if you are not very careful it degenerates into the most monotonous, deadening, slavish form of work. Your one salvation will be your sincerity, your enthusiasm. Start out by believing in your employer, in yourself, and in your ability to rise. If you do this you will be the sort of girl the business world needs, the sort of girl who has


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 her salary raised, the sort of girl who "makes good."

Here are two quotations which will prove immensely helpful to you. The first is from a poem by Dr. Henry Van Dyke:

The second is from Elbert Hubbard's little magazine, The Philistine.

When you have mastered their philosophy, and can go to your work each morning with a song in your heart, you will be the sort of girl the business world needs—and pays well.


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who has read the preceding chapters with any degree of earnestness can fail to realize that between the day of leaving school and the day of actual economic independence there is bound to be a period of financial stringency. This may be represented by an underpaid or even unpaid apprenticeship, or by a dreary search for work on the part of the untrained girl who must secure some sort of livelihood and her training through experience at one and the same time. Even the girl from out-of-town who has a trade or who has had office or store experience must prove her worth to the city employer, and this represents a period of living on very small wages.

A social worker who has given much earnest thought and investigation to the problem states that the average wage paid to the out-of-town girl during her first three months in a large city like New York, Chicago or Denver is five


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