At least, when a woman has passed the
period of childbearing she could bring to the school incalculable gifts
of balanced judgment and ripe understanding of life.

Meantime all the influences which have brought about the monopoly of
teaching by women are increasingly operative. Every year more able women
leave our high schools, normal schools and universities, with no
corresponding new lines of occupation open to them. The feeling of
rivalry between men and women teachers grows stronger each year.
Powerful teachers' federations, such as those in Chicago and Buffalo,
composed mainly of women, are said to be using their influence to favor
women. In New York City, the women teachers have compelled the city to
equalize the wages of men and women, at an annual expense of $3,500,000,
after a bitter fight lasting several years.

The effects of this monopoly upon the women themselves are very
difficult to estimate. Some alarmists tell us that women teachers face
the danger of a premature and loveless old age; that the celibate
communities they form in the commonwealth are marked by pettiness and
emotionalism; that the salaries paid teachers are so small that they
cannot provide for sickness and old age, and that, unless pensioned by
the state, some of them must one day eat the bread of charity.

On the other hand, we are told that education is the natural province
of women; that teaching fits them to be good mothers and helpful
citizens; that women alone can form the character of girls; and that
boys are refined and perfected by the constant contact with women.

Probably neither of these statements is wholly true. It is certain that
many women teachers do marry, do become the mothers of fine children,
and are social forces in their communities. With advancing standards of
scholarship, better salaries, old age pensions, and a popular demand for
professional efficiency in teachers, it will be increasingly difficult
for men to use the calling as a preparation for law and medicine, or for
women to use it as a preparation for matrimony. The calling doubtless
does offer a greater equivalent for marriage than most others; and many
women live their mother life vicariously for other people's children.

At the same time, however, when a woman has given fourteen years of her
life to preparation for teaching, eight years in an elementary school,
four in a high school, and from two to four in professional training,
she has made an inve