adequate
information as to requirements for efficiency, working conditions,
wages, living possibilities, and the effects, moral and physical, of
various occupations upon both men and women. The problems arising out
of the crossing and recrossing of these various elements are as yet
but vaguely understood. The great gain lies in the fact that their
solution is being sought.

The community is of necessity interested in workingwomen as it is in
workingmen. Without these workers the community does not exist. When
they are ill-paid, overworked, underfed, discontented, or inefficient,
the community necessarily suffers. When they work under proper
conditions, the community shares their prosperity. It is thus coming
to be seen that the condition of workers is the concern of all the
members of the community.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Factory workers. Sewers and sewing-machine operators to the number of
over 230,000, according to the 1919 Census, are employed in the United
States]

In the case of the woman worker, however, and especially of the young
woman worker, the community has a further interest because of the
service that women render as the mothers of the next and indeed of all
future generations. If, then, it is shown that women are physically
unfit for certain occupations that men may follow with safety, it
becomes the business of the community to protect women, even against
themselves if necessary, and to deter them from entering such lines of
work.

The community must make use of various agencies in bringing about the
proper relations between women and their work. It may use legislation,
thereby securing, for example, factory inspectors to improve the
sanitary and moral conditions in the places where women and girls are
employed. It may use the school, the library, and various civic
improvement forces to inform both girls and their parents as to
conditions under which girls should work. It may employ vocational
guides to make proper connections between women and their work.

For all these agencies to do satisfactory work, the first requisite is
knowledge of conditions. This means skillful work upon a vast and
rapidly increasing body of facts, and wide dissemination of the
results of such work.

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Unemployed utilizing their spare time to make themselves more
efficient. The community may make use of the schools for such
purposes]

We may not stop