rievous wrong.

But how is their singleness occupied?

We all know now that to a greater and greater degree it is getting
occupied with work, money-earning work.

The unmarried women in the twenty-five-to-twenty-nine age-period
constitute more than one-fourth of the total number of women in that
age-period in the United States. In the large cities they constitute
usually more than one-third of the total number of women in that
period. Wouldn't it have been remarkable if their families had been
able to support them all at home? Wouldn't it have been remarkable if
the human race had been able to carry so large a part of itself on its
back?

We now admit the world's need of the labor-power of women. If women
aren't laboring at home (at cooking, laundering, nursing, mothering,
_something_), they will be (or ought to be) laboring elsewhere.

In the smaller cities and country districts of America home-life is
still (by comparison) quite ample in the opportunities it offers the
unmarried daughter for participation in hard labor. Nevertheless the
Census finds that the percentage of women "breadwinners" in the
"smaller cities and country districts" is as follows:

Age-Periods Breadwinners

From 16 to 20 years of age 27 women out of every 100
From 21 to 24 years of age 26 women out of every 100
From 25 to 34 years of age 17 women out of every 100

"Smaller cities," to the Census, means cities having fewer than 50,000
inhabitants. In the larger cities, in the cities which have _more_
than 50,000 inhabitants, in the urban environment in which home-life
tends most to contract to an all-modern-conveniences size, in the
urban environment in which the domestic usefulness of unmarried
daughters tends most to contract to the dimensions of "sympathy" and
"companionship," the Census finds that the percentage of women
breadwinners is as follows:

Age-Periods Breadwinners

From 16 to 20 years of age 52 women out of every 100
From 21 to 24 years of age 45 women out of every 100
From 25 to 34 years of age 27 women out of every 100

Therefore:

If, in educating girls, we do not educate them for the _possibility_
of money-earning work, we are exposing them to the possibility of
having to do that work without being schooled to it; we are exposing
them to the possibility of having to take the first job they see, of
having to do _almost anything_ for _almost not