But the impulse to congratulate ourselves upon this vastly increased product of labor is checked when we take up the typically modern girl's life at a later stage. We have observed already that her life during her first fourteen years is utterly unrelated to the next period, which she spends in store or factory. The training of her childhood has been no preparation for the employments of her girlhood. She is but an unskilled hand, the last cog in a machine, and if these prove but seven lean years for her, it is only what we might expect. When they are ended, and married life entered upon, we are again struck by the absence of any relation between either of these two life-periods and the stage preceding, and by the fact that at no time is any intelligent preparation made either for a wage-earning or a domestic career. This means an utter dislocation between the successive stages of woman's life, a dislocation, the unfortunate results of which, end not with the sex directly affected, but bring about a thousand other evils, the lowering of the general wage standard, the deterioration of home life, and serious loss to the children of the coming generation. As far as we know, such a dislocation in the normal development of women's lives never took place before on any large scale. I am speaking of it here solely in relation to the sum of the well-being of the whole community. As it affects the individual girl and woman herself it has been dealt with under other heads. The cure which the average man has to propose is pithily summed up in the phrase: "Girls ought to stay at home." The home as woman's sole sphere is even regarded as the ultimate solution of the whole difficulty by many men, who know well that it is utterly impracticable today. A truer note was struck by John Work, when addressing himself specially to socialist men: It would be fatal to our prospects of reaching the women with the message of socialism if we were to give the millions of wage-earning women to understand that we did not intend to let them continue earning their own living, but proposed to compel them to become dependent upon men. They price what little independence they have, and they want more of it. It would be equally fatal to our prospects of reaching the women with the message of socialism if we were to give the married women to understand that they must remain dependent upon men. It is one of the most hopeful signs of the times that they are chafing under the galling chains of dependence. * * * * * Far from shutting women out of the industries, socialism will do just the opposite. It will open up to every woman a full and free opportunity to earn her own living and receive her full earnings. This means the total cessation of marrying for a home.