ch their strength
would otherwise have been insufficient. Through the industrial revolution
brought about by factory work, the general body of women workers became
wage-earners, rather than unpaid workers who contributed to the financial
earnings of their fathers and husbands.

In Canada, the process of development of women's work in the past fifty
years has been rapid. The grandmothers of the women of this generation
carded wool and used spinning wheels within the memory of workers of less
than middle age. One old woman who died not many years ago told how she
used to bake in an oven out-of-doors and had dyed homespun with butternut.
The soap cauldron stood on the levelled stump of what had been once a
forest tree. Candles were moulded in iron moulds. Household industries were
carried on expertly in the homes of pioneers by the women of the family.

When these days had gone, there followed other days in which the children
of the pioneers devoted themselves to the schooling so highly esteemed but
rarely enjoyed by their parents. The boys, after school life, turned
to business, railway employments, teaching, banking, farming, became
ministers, lawyers, doctors, or gave their thoughts to politics.
The girls taught school, were milliners or dressmakers, went into shops,
or became the wives of nation builders in every walk of life. A few were
nurses, journalists, doctors, or missionaries.

The work of that generation has been followed by a century in which
Canadian girls are invited to share in nearly every form of activity. This
great freedom with its many opportunities has come for noble ends. What the
girls of to-day must strive to do is to take up their work with a vision of
what it may be made to mean--men and women in co-partnership laying the
foundations of a new earth.

It is probable that the social and domestic conditions of the earliest
workers were far below those of the average worker of to-day. But, although
present conditions are better than those of the past, the process of
amelioration should be greatly advanced by this generation. The increasing
opportunities of girls, both in home-making and paid employment, are likely
to become a contributing factor in the humanizing of every form of
industry. We have learned to realize the possibilities of machinery.
What we must do now is to imagine and realize the possibilities of the
individual worker. This can be done only through study, experience, and
actual wo