s, _as teachers_.

But the teaching trade is getting choked. There is too much supply.
Girls are going to college in hordes. Graduating from college, looking
for work, there is usually just one kind of work toward which they are
mentally alert. Their college experience has seldom roused their minds
toward any other kind of work. They start to teach. They drug the
market. And so the teaching trade, the great occupation of unmarried
educated women, ceases to be able to provide those women, as a class,
with an adequate field of employment.

It is a turning point in the economic history of educated women. It
is a turning point in the history of women's education.

At the 1909 annual convention of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae,
in Cincinnati, Miss Susan Kingsbury (acting for a committee of which
Mrs. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Miss
Breckenridge, of the University of Chicago, were members) read a real
essay on "The Economic Efficiency of College Women."

This essay was not written till detailed reports on income and
expenditure from 377 self-supporting college women had been got
together.

Out of these 377 there were 317 who were teachers. All of them had
gone all the way through college. More than half of them had
followed up their regular college course with from one to eight
years of graduate study. The capital invested in their education
was, in the average case, from $2,500 to $3,500. Often, however, it
amounted to $7,000 because of advanced work and travel. After all
this preparation, the average income achieved may be sufficiently
disclosed in the one fact that, among those graduates who had been at
work for from six to eight years, more than seventy per cent. were
still earning less than $1,100.

After drawing a complete statistical picture of the case, Miss
Kingsbury concluded with certain questions and recommendations, here
condensed, which show the new economic needs of educated women
knocking at the door of the higher education.

"Should not the oversupply of teachers be reduced by directing many of
our graduates into other pursuits than teaching? This will place upon
the college, just where the responsibility is due, the obligation of
discovering what those opportunities are and what preparation should
be given.

"This organization should endeavor to arouse in our colleges a sense
of responsibility for knowing the facts with regard to their
graduates, both socia