organizations are not the heart of
her matter. The heart of her matter lies in what she does for those
who come into immediate contact with her.

Her business firmly established in her immediate group should grow as
a man's business does in the outer circle where he naturally operates.
It will become stable or unstable exactly as trade or profession
becomes stable or unstable. Every year it should take on new elements,
ramify, turn up new obligations, knit itself more firmly into the life
of the community. With every year it should become necessarily more
complicated, broader in interests, more demanding on her intellectual
and spiritual qualities. Each one of the original members of her group
gathers others about himself. In the nature of the case she will
become one of the strongest influences in these new groups. As a
member goes out she will project herself into other communities or
perhaps other lands, into all sorts of industries, professions, and
arts. Her growth is absolutely natural. It is, too, one of the most
economical growths the world knows. Nothing is lost in it. She spreads
literally like the banyan tree.

Yet in spite of this perfectly obvious fact, there are people to-day
asking, with all appearance of sincerity, what a woman of fifty or
more can _do_! Their confining work in the home, say these observers,
is done. A common suggestion is that they be utilized in politics.
This suggestion has its comical side. A person who has nothing to do
after fifty years of life in a business as many-sided and demanding as
that of a woman, can hardly be expected to be worth much in a business
as complicated and uncertain as politics, and for which she has had no
training. The notion that the woman's business is ended at fifty or
sixty is fantastic. It only ends there if she has been blind to the
meaning of her own experiences; if she has never gone below the
surface of her task--never seen in it anything but physical relations
and duties; has sensed none of its intimate relations to the
community, none of its obligations toward those who have left her,
none of those toward the oncoming generations. If it ends there, she
has failed to realize, too, the tremendous importance to all those
who belong in her circle or who touch it _of what she makes of
herself_, of her personal achievement.

A woman of fifty or sixty who has succeeded, has come to a point of
sound philosophy and serenity which is of the utmost value i