The woman movement has sometimes been interpreted by rich women as giving them the privilege of doing what they like and by the respectable middle class as furnishing a means of dignifying leisure. Among working women, however, it has made little headway. I say this realizing that there are thousands of whom this is not true. But the working woman in New York, as I have said, still retains the tradition of home life as her most cherished sentiment, expecting to return from industry to a home of her own. And the very beauty and power of this old ideal obscures the fact that the home of the future must be strong enough to stand all the strain to which in the nature of the case it will be subjected. To stand its ground it needs not the negative submission of dependents, but the co-operation of strong independent individuals. The new working woman’s movement when under way will have within it certain sounder elements than the movement among middle-class and wealthy women. For in industry one learns promptness, order and adaptation to ends--in other words, efficiency. Bringing back this business sense into the home and enlarging it by those spiritual enthusiasms which give a sense of roominess and freedom, no matter what one’s daily task may be, the working woman, when once this new social adjustment has been made, will be a new kind of new woman in whose consciousness the destinies of home, industry and society will be seen as fused into one. Her duties toward society and toward the home will be seen to be indissolubly connected. And when her children are born she will see to it that the old negative protection of the home shall be supplemented by the positive elements of protection, the chief of which is the flame of a positive enthusiasm. But this desirable end, this real social adjustment, will not take place unless society is prepared to adopt a practical program embodying these three elements--proper opportunities for pleasure, a living wage and the cultivation of independence, self-respect and idealism. FOOTNOTES: [40] A paper presented at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, December 4, 1909. MARRIED WOMEN IN INDUSTRY FLORENCE KELLEY General Secretary, National Consumers’ League Throughout all history married women have carried on productive industry, feeding and clothing the race. And in that coöperative commonwealth which some of us hope to see, they will undoubtedly again participate largely and beneficently in the industrial work of the community.