Here in America we are always locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen. Not until many “accidents” had occurred in the use of antitoxins did Congress pass an act (1902) regulating the manufacture and interstate sale of the viruses, serums, toxins, etc. The supervision and control were vested in the Secretary of the Treasury through the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service. Previous to April 1, 1905, there was no official standard for measuring the strength of diphtheria antitoxin. Previous to October 25, 1907, there were as many units or standards for tetanus antitoxin as there were producers. One was labeled “6,000,000 units per c.c.” and another “0.75 unit per c.c.,” while, according to official standard, the first had only 90 and the latter 770. The point to be made is that however faulty an official or Federal standard for sanitary devices may be, it is a standard, and so is of service in protecting the people, especially those away from active centers of research. CHAPTER IX _There is responsibility as well as opportunity. The housewife an important factor and an economic force in improving the national health and increasing the national wealth._ It would indeed seem that opposition to woman’s participation in the totality of life is a romantic subterfuge, resting not so much on belief in the disability of woman as on the disposition of man to appropriate conspicuous and pleasurable objects for his sole use and ornamentation. “A little thing, but all mine own,” was one of the remarks of Achilles to Agamemnon in their quarrel over the two maidens, and it contains the secret of man’s world-old disposition to overlook the _intrinsic_ worth of woman. _W. I. Thomas, Women and Their Occupations, American Magazine, October, 1909._ The president of the British Medical Association about 1892 said, “I wish to impress it upon you that the whole future progress of sanitary movement rests, for its permanent and executive support, upon the women of our land.” In a letter to Madame Bodichon, dated April 6, 1868, George Eliot writes: “What I should like to be sure of as a result of higher education for women--a result that will come to pass over my grave--is their recognition of the great amount of social _unproductive_ labor which needs to be done by women, and which is now either not done at all or done wretchedly.” _Quoted by Mrs. Nixon in a paper before the Conference of Women Workers in England, 1904._ CHAPTER IX WOMAN’S RESPONSIBILITY There are about 40,000,000 women and girls in the United States. About 14,000,000 live in the country and have a direct and compelling power over the life of the community.