These two instances do not begin to show Mrs. Ford’s complete range of authority. She fixes compensation for all employees of the Department of Education, save those of the teachers. She keeps track of all the funds and accounts of the Department, recommends changes from time to time in the financial arrangements for spending the money voted. She follows the course of the legislation at Albany which affects the school system in the city. In short, she more than any other person is the public school system of New York City. Back of all this power are years of experience in school work. Mrs. Ford has headed nearly every sort of school in the country, and was for years nominally Assistant Superintendent and really Superintendent of Schools of Detroit. She has delivered over four thousand lectures to teachers’ associations, telling them then, as now she tells New York, how to run a school system. Mrs. Ford knows how. It was no fluke that gave a woman such a strategic position in the city’s administration. Whether or not they are concerned in holding offices themselves, women have taken an interest in the character of the officers charged with every kind of public function. Civil service reform is one of the earliest changes espoused by women. Their first paths beyond the home threshold led them into fields of relief, correction, and labor where their home training in thrift was rudely shocked at the extravagance and irresponsibility which they met among officials in public institutions and in city positions. In 1896 women appeared before the annual meetings of the National Civil Service Reform League to make addresses. In that year Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell spoke on the “Relation of Women to the Movement for Reform in the Civil Service,” and her speech helped to stimulate the belief in men that the help of women was of importance, and to inspire women to a sense of their own usefulness in this direction. Soon after that women like Mrs. Oakley of the Federation of Clubs appeared at the sessions to report work of clubwomen and carry back to them from the National Civil Service Reform League some inspiration for further effort. It was not long before women as well as men began to urge greater interest in civil service reform at conferences of charities and corrections and similar assemblies. Women’s auxiliaries to civil service reform associations are now quite common. There are also committees on civil service reform connected with the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, patriotic societies, and kindred associations. The Women’s Municipal League of New York and the Women’s Auxiliary of the National Civil Service Reform League have a joint committee for the promotion of education along this line and for the continual study of the problem.