to find that her talent, sufficient to excite admiring
comment among her friends, has proved inadequate to make her a
worth-while actress.

"Why don't you study art?" say the friends of another girl; or, "You
like to take care of sick people. Why don't you train for nursing?"
or, "You're so fond of books. I should think you would be a
librarian"--quite regardless of the fact that the girl advised to
study art has neither the perseverance nor the health to study
successfully; that the one advised to be a nurse lacks patience and
repose to a considerable degree; or that the one advised to be a
librarian is already suffering from strained eyes and should choose
her vocation from the great outdoors.

Knowledge of the girl must, however, be supplemented by a wide
knowledge of vocations to be of real value to the teacher or parent
who is preparing to give vocational counsel. Final choice may be
reached only after the girl and the vocation are brought into
comparative scrutiny, and their mutual fitness determined. In rare
cases the choice may be made by the swift process of observing a great
talent which, in the absence of serious objections, must govern the
life work. Oftener the process is one of elimination, or of building
up from a general foundation of the girl's abilities and limitations,
and her possibilities for training sufficient to make her an efficient
worker in the line chosen.

A knowledge of vocations presupposes, first of all, a grasp of the
essentials of the work, and hence the characteristics required in the
worker to perform it. What sort of girl is needed to make an efficient
teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker? How may we recognize
this potential teacher without resorting to a clumsy, time-wasting,
trial-and-error method? These are matters with which schools and
vocational guides all over the country are occupying themselves.
Perhaps we cannot do better than to examine somewhat these
requirements for some occupations toward which girls most often
incline.

THE PRODUCING GROUP

The girl who is by nature a maker of things may be a factory worker, a
needlewoman, a baker, a poultry farmer, a milliner, a photographer, or
an artist with brush or with voice, or in dramatic work. She is still
one who makes things. We see at once how wide a range of industry may
open to her.

How shall we know this type of girl? First of all, by her interest in
things rather than in people. With the exception of