If a foundation of the fundamental sciences be laid at school the student can subsequently build upon it the special science that is suited to his career. It matters little what the calling in life of any person may be; if he aim at success in that calling he must acquaint himself with the laws by which he has his being, and by which he must perforce be guided in all his actions as well as in his intercourse with his fellow-men. The many avenues now open to women for public work entail on them the responsibility of fitting themselves for that work. They as much as, if not more than, the housewife need to study the sciences which treat of the safeguarding of human life. As councillors dealing with sanitary and building laws, as inspectors of workrooms, of institutions, and of the conditions of child-life, they owe it to themselves and to the community they serve not to undertake those duties without adequate knowledge. Adequate knowledge must be taken to mean scientific knowledge of those matters of which, by offering themselves for such appointments, they assume an expert knowledge. It is an irony that scientific training should be willingly and even eagerly acquired when it is a question of qualifying for a salaried post for work among strangers, and that a mother should be content to bring to bear on the well-being and lives of her own circle unscientific and amateur experience. We have only been able to touch the skirt of a great subject, but our end will have been achieved if we have succeeded in pointing the way for a fuller realisation of the aims of earnest men and women for the saving of child-life and the mitigation of disease, and if we have shown how great that subject is--how much too great for anything but the most superficial treatment in a single article. THE ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF THE HOUSEHOLD BY MABEL ATKINSON, M.A. (GLASGOW) I. INTRODUCTORY