It has taken considerable effort on the part of nurses to convince the people, and to convince some doctors, that they are any more than machines. Because we ask for three hours rest out of the twenty-four, and because we asked for a fixed rate for service, Dr. Head says that our loyalty to high ideals is diminishing. Unfortunately, in the nursing profession, as in all other professions, there are some who are incapable and unconscientious; and, if Dr. Head had the experience of having a nurse leave a patient, unattended, at a critical time, she probably was one of the few incapables, or was so overtired from loss of sleep that it was necessary for her to have rest. When Dr. Head says that a nurse should waive her rest hours for days or a week at a time, if necessary, I think he is making a mistake. A nurse cannot do her duty by a patient if she does not have proper rest. It is unfair to both the patient and the nurse. Dr. Head may say that most patients are not in need of constant attention for more than a few days or a week, and that a nurse can stand it for that length of time without rest hours. This is true; but we have to consider that the next case may be just as critical, and so the nurse must reserve some strength for the cases to follow. And more often than not, the nurse is obliged to take cases with very little or no rest between them. In the second place, Dr. Head thinks that the nurses ought to have a varying scale of charges for service. The doctors do it; why shouldn’t the nurses? Dr. Head does not seem to consider the fact that the nurse has one patient, while the doctor has many. Suppose a nurse takes care of a poor patient for five or ten dollars a week, where is the rich patient who is willing to pay forty or fifty dollars a week to make up the loss? The nurses have found that twenty-five dollars a week is the price that is necessary for them to live on in order to keep themselves clothed, pay for their laundry (no small item), and carry them over the few weeks of rest or over the dull season. The average life of a nurse, as a nurse, is, I believe, not more than ten years. In that length of time, at the wages she gets, she is not able to lay away a great amount for a rainy day, which usually comes all too soon. We have a number of good hospitals in Minneapolis where people in moderate circumstances can be very comfortably cared for at a considerably less expense than employing a nurse in their homes. The poor in our city, I think, are fairly well taken care of in the city hospitals and by the visiting nurses, who are paid for such work.