Woman may not be getting as much money for some kinds of work as man would were he doing the same work himself. But the beginning counts for a great deal in this world. Everybody knows the old saying that the first step is half the battle, and woman has taken the first step. According to the authority above quoted she has taken over three hundred of them, which is more than man can say for himself during the same period. No matter what may be said by the men who have been displaced by women in the various departments of business; no matter what may be said by unpardonable gossips about women stepping aside from the family circle to do work which has no appearance of domesticity about it, the truth is that the appearance of women in the business world has been of immense service to the gentler sex, and indirectly of great benefit to the lords of creation. It is absolutely necessary to the civilization of the world that the great mass of mankind should realize that woman is something better than a mere dependent on man, and there is no quicker way of teaching this lesson than that of demonstrating that woman is quite competent to take care of herself if she has a fair chance. A fair chance has been offered. It has been embraced, and some hundreds of thousands of women in the United States are doing for themselves far better than they would have been done for by the men into whose power they would have fallen under the old custom of making a woman’s maintenance and existence entirely dependent upon the male members of her own family. A large department of industry in which women are employed, outside of household duties, is that of work at the government offices at Washington. Irresponsible newspaper paragraphers used to write a great many ugly things about treasury clerks and pension office clerks and other feminine employés of the government. But that sort of writing has gone entirely out of practice. Seeing is believing, and the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who have yearly visited the national capital are satisfied from their own observation and still more by their personal acquaintance with attachés of the different departments that woman not only knows how to work, but can prolong her efforts and maintain regular hours quite as well as any man; and, to put it mildly, that she is quite as respectable as man. Still more important, woman has not yet found it necessary to go out to drink. It is a severer joke and comment upon the stronger sex than any man yet has been willing to admit that, while clerks in all departments of the government service at the national capital may be found who deem it necessary to stimulate themselves during business hours, women work the customary hours prescribed, do their work well, and find no need of artificial stimulation.