Those who have not actually adopted dress-making, millinery, or lingerie as an occupation, have, as a rule, acquired only the knowledge necessary for running a certain machine—a cutter, a folder, a binder, a stamper, or a typewriter, etc. Or else they have learnt to wait in restaurants, sell goods across a counter, or keep books. Only about one million of them are either domestic servants or hospital nurses. Those engaged in industry or commerce who remain at their work and do not marry are at least prevented from passing on their acquired besotment to the next generation; but, meantime, no one inquires about their bodies, and the general feeling is that a girl withered and broken by long years of typing is not a tragic figure because in the first place her career has been morally unimpeachable, and secondly it has brought neither herself nor anyone else any pleasure. In the better classes, teaching and the professions obtain the bulk of the recruits each year,[4] and girls are now trained quite unselectively from earliest childhood with a view to entering these occupations, as if it were taken for granted that they would never marry. Footnote 4: In 1923 in England and Wales there were 22 women barristers, and 66 law students; 5 women solicitors; 76,117 Government officials, and 2,000 doctors; and, in 1921, 93,987 elementary and secondary school-teachers. Not all of the 6,403,916 spinsters—whether workers or not—are doomed to spinsterhood. As we have seen, the excess of females over males in England and Wales is only 1,720,902.[5] But unless they attempt to emigrate, these odd 2,000,000 must certainly remain unmated, and even if emigration could now be organized on a much bigger scale than hitherto, they could hardly be satisfactorily disposed of. Footnote 5: Although, however, the actual excess of women amount to 1,720,902, the number of women actually doomed to spinsterhood is much greater, owing first to the cases of celibacy among the available men and secondly to the marriage of widows. The self-governing Dominions cannot absorb more than 432,284[6] in all, and even if they could, it is doubtful whether such a large number of girls could be induced to leave their native country. Why should they, when almost every one of them considers her chance of matrimony at home as at least equal to her sister’s or neighbour’s? Footnote 6: This figure represents the excess of men over women in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in 1921. Dame Muriel Talbot, O.B.E., writing on the effect of Dominion life, is not so very encouraging either. “For the woman,” she says, “it means only too often an unduly heavy burden of work since there are so few at hand to help.”[7] Footnote 7: See _The Woman’s Year Book_, 1923.