In the year 1909 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company undertook the nursing of its industrial policyholders—an important event in the annals of visiting nursing. I had suggested the practicality of this to one of the officials of the company, a man of broad experience, and he, immediately responsive, provided opportunity for me to present to his colleagues evidence of the reduction of mortality, the hastening of convalescence, and the ability to bring to sick people the resources that the community provides for treatment through the institution of visiting nursing. The company employed our staff to care for its patients, and the experiment has been extended until a nursing service practically covers its industrial policyholders in Canada and the United States. The company thereby gave an enormous impetus to education and hygiene in the homes and treatment of the sick on the only basis that makes it possible for persons of small means to receive nursing without charity—namely, through insurance. The demand for the public health nurse coming from all sides was so great that for a time it could not be adequately met. Women of initiative and personality with broad education were needed, for much of the work required pioneering zeal. Instructive inspection, on the nurse’s part, like other educational work, requires suitable and sound preparation, a superstructure of efficiency upon woman’s natural aptitudes. [Illustration] The Henry Street Settlement and other groups with well-established visiting nursing systems responded to the need by offering opportunities for post-graduate training and experience in the newly opened field of public health nursing, and sought co-ordination with formal educational institutions for instruction in social theories and pedagogy. In 1910 the Department of Nursing and Health was created at Teachers College, Columbia University, embracing in its completed form the Department of Hospital Economics established there in 1899 by the efforts of training-school superintendents. This department is in affiliation with the settlement. At least four important training-schools for nurses are now working under the direction of universities, and other provision has been made to give education supplementary to the hospital training. Nurses themselves have taken the initiative in securing the means for equipping women in their profession to meet the new requirements. They are providing helpful literature and finding stimulating associations with others enlisted in similar efforts for human welfare. I had the honor to be elected first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. At the conference held in 1913 (less than a year after the formation of the society) an assemblage of women gathered from all parts of the country to seek guidance and inspiration for this work, and something that was very like religious fervor characterized their meetings.