If, in heightening the fury of the economic war, she achieved her own adaptation and contentedness; if in complicating the economic difficulties of large societies, she achieved any specific result, valuable to the community and unobtainable without her, her presence would be as much a boon as is that of the mother, or any other active contributor to the main stream of Life. But, seeing that she neither succeeds in securing her own happiness, nor in promoting the happiness of the society in which she finds herself—for, apart from nursing, domestic service and certain trades connected with drapery and women’s and children’s apparel, it is difficult to point to any extra-domestic occupation that is typically women’s work—it is doubtful whether she may not be regarded as a burden on the community and an aggravation of its already enormous problems. It should not be forgotten that industry, commerce, the professions and the Civil Service are but institutions organized for the purposes of Life. The main stream of Life certainly runs through them, and derives its security, its relative permanence and its fluency from their harmonious functions, but they exist for Life, and not Life for them. It is Life that is important, the channels through which it flows are only significant, as auxiliary to the main purpose. Now the spinster, by being wholly divorced from any direct connexion with the main stream of Life, for which society and the Empire exist, is severed from the most important phenomenon on earth that can justify existence. The next best course is to obtain an indispensable foothold in the machinery that makes the stream of Life, as we have said, more secure, more permanent and more fluent. The moment, therefore, it can be shown that the spinster can lay no valid claim to this one remaining indispensable foothold, but rather that she only clogs, impedes and retards the machinery that assists Life, her last justification for existence vanishes; and whatever the work may be that she is doing, however “useful” it is, we fail to make out her claim to toleration the moment it can be shown (1) that the work would be done as well or better by a man or a married woman, (2) that she is not assisting but only retarding the machinery that makes the main stream of Life possible. _In short, it amounts to this_: Society does not exist for the spinster. Life does not flourish when it is cultivated too luxuriously in its cul-de-sac ramifications. The main stream is too important. But there is another and even sadder aspect to the entrance of women into the arena of commercial, industrial and financial occupations.