understood the reality of my fear. I knew the peril to the future. It is
the problem of unstable woman, clamorous and devouring, that cries aloud
for solution.

_First Essay_

THE PROSPERITY OF FOOLS

WHICH TREATS OF WAR WORKERS, AND THE CHANGES THAT HAVE COME IN WOMEN'S
IDEALS

"The turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the
prosperity of fools shall destroy them."--Prov. i. 32.

I

I have lying upon my study table, on the chairs and even spreading over
upon the floor, a heaped-up litter of documents. Board of Trade
inquiries, Government reports, newspaper cuttings, recent books,
articles from the reviews and popular magazines--all dealing, in one
manner or another, with women's labor and their position as workers in
the immediate past and in the future. Woman, eternally surprising, has
established her power in new fields.

During the five war years a revolution has taken place in the industrial
position of women. But the war was not the cause of the revolution. It
only afforded an opportunity for forces to display themselves which
already were in action. It hurried women forward, running at top speed,
along paths where before their feet had slowly walked. War hastened the
action of forces existing already. The wage-earning woman came in with
the forties with the factory system, and every year she has increased in
numbers, but during the five years of war her ranks have gained an
enormous influx; moreover, a different class of girls and women have
come to seek different kinds of work. And what marks the permanent
importance of this is that a change of occupations has brought with it a
startling change of behavior and outlook.

Just as the militarist has regarded war, not as a means of preventing
the enslavement of peoples and their subjection to foreign rule, but
rather as in itself a source of virtue and blessing, of progress and
civilization; so too the feminist teachers have told us, not that the
entrance of women into munition works was necessary to enable our
country to arm for its terrible war, but have hailed the successive
appearances of women in factories, foundries, and railway-stations as
in itself a great step forward; as a goal long strived for that has been
gained. What has been going on is a continuance of the process by which
women are led more and more to escape from any specialization of
function and are brought into competition with men in every kind of
occupat