It is only in this later day that we begin to realize other possibilities, and to wonder if the world has not had enough of wars and tumults, and cannot bring about the desired end without further expenditure of blood and tears. With war has ever been, and ever will be, the forcing of women left with no breadwinner into the ranks of the earners, and only later centuries have given an opportunity beyond domestic service. It is the last fifty years that has suddenly opened up the myriad possibilities in the more than four hundred trades into which women have thronged. The field is so enormous that one is tempted aside from the real point at issue. What we have to do is to consider work for women as a whole, with all that it involves for womankind. It is not alone the worker herself, but the woman who uses the product of the worker's labor that should understand what obligation is laid upon her. She is not free from responsibility, for certain conditions which have come to the surface, that form part of the life of the day, and must be dealt with in wiser fashion than heretofore, if we are to attain the "consummation devoutly to be wished." In the beginning of our history, women were at as high a premium as they are now in the remote West, but this was a temporary state, and as more and more, Fortune smiled on the struggling colonies, many forms of labor were transferred from male to female hands. Limitations were of the sharpest. That they were often unconscious ones, made them no less grinding. To "better one's self" was the effort of all. Long before the Declaration of Independence had formulated the thought that all men possess certain inalienable rights, amongst which are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," this had become the faith of those who, braving the perils of the deep, had settled in an unknown country, that they might enjoy the rights to which they had been born. The largest liberty for the individual consistent with the equal liberty of others was demanded and received, nor did it lessen as time went on. Liberty begat liberty. The ideal was always a growing one. Less limitation, not more, was the order of each fresh day that dawned. To every soul born into the colony, to every descendant of these souls, was a larger hope, a higher ambition. The standard of living altered steadily even in that portion of the country which retained longest the old simplicity, and best knew how to combine "plain living and high thinking," until in course of time the family remained no longer a colony in itself. Clothing and every necessary, which was formerly of home manufacture, could now be obtained from without, and women found outside the family practicable work to do.