The bindery girls’ experiences indicate that in so far as adaptation to change is a matter of chance, women are not profiting by changes or gaining new opportunities. On the contrary their standard of living is menaced by uncertainty. The danger to be feared is the danger of neglect. The remedy would seem to be the substitution of forethought for chance, the safeguarding of minimum standards by education, organization and legislation. FOOTNOTES: [30] This article is based on a chapter of a report not yet published on women’s work in binderies in New York. It is the result of an investigation carried on for the Alliance Employment Bureau of New York from the autumn of 1907 until the spring of 1909. Every bindery in the borough of Manhattan was visited, and 205 women employed in the trade were interviewed at their homes or in the office of the bureau. [31] _U. S. Census_, 1900. _Occupations_, pp. LII, CXXXVI. THE TRAINING OF MILLINERY WORKERS ALICE P. BARROWS Committee on Women’s Work, New York City “We have no time for learners.”--“Learning is nothing but running errands.”--“It’s always experience, experience they want, and I didn’t have it, so what was the use?”--“Trade schools are no good. It is altogether different outside.” These were some of the remarks heard at the beginning of an investigation of workers in the millinery trade[32] which led to an intensive study of the training of girls for that occupation. “Industrial education” is a large, general term. What it meant to the workers in one trade throws much light upon it, and suggests a method for dealing with a subject which is at present rather topheavy with theories. Probably no trade in which girls are employed could illustrate better than millinery the present status of industrial education for girls in New York City. There are more women in this trade than in any other except the clothing trades. There are more classes in millinery than in any other women’s trade except dress making. It is one of the first industrial subjects introduced into the school curriculum. Yet an investigation of workers in millinery showed that these classes were being formed when there was little information upon the most important factors in the problem of trade training--that is, the girls, the schools where they had received their previous instruction, and the trade in which they worked.