sehold duties is in furthering the
husband's work, if he is struggling up; or, if he has "arrived," in
these miscellaneous gratuitous social services in which the club-women
so abound.

There is great need that this judgment be revised. Not only is this
true in the interest of women whose devotion to a chosen vocation has
right of way in justice when the debate is on as to the use of any
left-over time she may save from domestic duties. It is also true that
we can not have the democratic feeling and influence from women of
social position which our political life so sadly needs unless it is
understood that it is as honorable for a woman, married or unmarried,
to earn money for her work as it is for a man with or without an
inherited fortune. The class feeling that makes all married women
range themselves with those of their sex who have inherited fortunes,
and leads them to place those who serve the community in salaried
positions as less unselfish and less honorable social workers than
themselves, is one to outgrow. An interest divorced from professional
standards or professional compensation is not necessarily nobler or
more useful. This fact makes the choice of women before marriage as to
the use of time that may justly be spared, even when the home makes
its heaviest demands upon them, a choice of social as well as of
personal significance.

Every year social effort once strictly of private provision and
support becomes a public service, with organized supervision and
standardized compensation. When such volunteer social effort becomes a
public service it is highly desirable that the trained women it
demands for its staff should (some of them, at least) be married
women. Otherwise, the same loss of efficiency that the rapid turn-over
of the women teaching staff of our schools occasions will be
discovered in our social work as it changes its centre of gravity from
the private to the public organization.

There is a far greater need from this point of view for reorganization
of hours and details of work so as to give more half-time or
quarter-time employment to women of proved ability, than for any
wholesale condemnation of the woman who works outside her home for
pay, even when her husband is able and willing to "take care of her."
It is for society to say, indeed, that women marrying and having
children owe first duty to the home. It is for women themselves to say
whether they shall use any time at their disposa