In the smaller cities and country districts of America home-life is still (by comparison) quite ample in the opportunities it offers the unmarried daughter for participation in hard labor. Nevertheless the Census finds that the percentage of women “breadwinners” in the “smaller cities and country districts” is as follows:

Age-PeriodsBreadwinners
From 16 to 20 years of age27 women out of every 100
From 21 to 24 years of age26 women out of every 100
From 25 to 34 years of age17 women out of every 100

“Smaller cities,” to the Census, means cities having fewer than 50,000 inhabitants. In the larger cities, in the cities which have more than 50,000 inhabitants, in the urban environment in which home-life tends most to contract to an all-modern-conveniences size, in the urban environment in which the domestic usefulness of unmarried daughters tends most to contract to the dimensions of “sympathy” and “companionship,” 50 the Census finds that the percentage of women breadwinners is as follows:

Age-PeriodsBreadwinners
From 16 to 20 years of age52 women out of every 100
From 21 to 24 years of age45 women out of every 100
From 25 to 34 years of age27 women out of every 100

Therefore:

If, in educating girls, we do not educate them for the possibility of money-earning work, we are exposing them to the possibility of having to do that work without being schooled to it; we are exposing them to the possibility of having to take the first job they see, of having to do almost anything for almost nothing; we are doing them a wrong so demonstrable and so grievous that it cannot continue.

The schools which give a direct preparation for industrial life are growing fast.

In the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, in New York City, many hundreds of young girls are, in each year, enrolled. These girls have completed the first five public-school grades. They are learning now to be workers in paste and glue for such occupations as sample-mounting 51 and candle-shade-making, to be workers with brush and pencil for such occupations as photograph-retouching and costume-sketching, to be milliners, to be dressmakers, to be operators of electric-power sewing-machines.

“Nothing to it,” says an irritated manufacturer. “Nothing to it at all. I can’t get any good help any more. Back to the old days! Those early New Englanders who made the business of this country what it is, they didn’t have all this technical business. They didn’t study in trade schools.”

My dear sir, those early New Englanders not only studied in trade schools, but worked and played and slept in trade schools. They spent their whole lives in trade schools, from the moment when they began to crawl on the floor among their mothers’ looms and spinning-wheels. There were few homes in early New England that didn’t offer large numbers of technical courses in which the father and the mother were always teaching by doing and the sons and the daughters were always learning by imitating.