The home is the "cradle of life," it was the birthplace of those industries which to-day form the great centres and constitute the means of livelihood for millions. In some of these there is reason to believe that woman took her share as originator. With the process of time, these primitive practices have grown into the great industries and arts of to-day, yet it is still to the woman that the call comes to cultivate and use her taste in these matters, so that when it falls to her to be responsible for the decoration and furnishing of a house, she may be able to choose in all departments of life what is _the best_, to the everlasting benefit of herself and her family, both physically and morally. If man be the producer and distributer of wealth, woman is certainly the director of consumption. On her rests the responsibility of expending wisely and well the money entrusted to her for the nutrition and clothing of her family, and how can this be adequately fulfilled if she have no real knowledge of the subject beyond what she is able to pick up as she goes along, a method detrimental to all concerned? Little would be thought of any business house which entrusted its most delicate operations to inexperienced buyers, or of any municipality which allowed its affairs to be conducted by an amateur. Far less would be heard of misery, poverty, and ill-health if the art of buying and preparing food, for instance, were properly understood by those whom it most concerns. Again, the chief racial responsibility falls on woman; it is just in the most precious years of childhood that her influence is so potent, and it is the mother, who besides helping to sow all the ethical and spiritual seeds, should safeguard the perfect physical condition of her children, in order that an unimpaired vitality and constitution be handed on from generation to generation. No proverb is truer than "Mens sana in corpore sano"; the two go hand in hand together, and their accomplishment is the proud privilege of the woman. From the family flows the life of the nation, and the power to guide it aright lies largely in the hands of women, whether they be married or single. With the married woman her own family comes first of all, and then through it her duty as a citizen; the unmarried woman's duties as a citizen are manifold, and each year they increase and expand. Nearly all the activities of public life are open to her; for instance she may sit on County Councils, Municipal Councils, District Councils, urban and rural Parish Councils,[8] Boards of Guardians, &c.; in fact in the growing field of social work, her services are being more and more recognised as indispensable, and it is impossible in a few words to enumerate all the possibilities of service which lie before her, both professional and philanthropic.