The special status of the married woman will no doubt survive all readjustment of traditional modes of thought, and will tend to withdraw her mind from the steady pursuit of industrial efficiency, because she will never consider wage earning to be her special task in the world. That has tempted her hitherto to steer off from the currents in the mid-stream of industrial life, and float upon those that flow more sluggishly by the margin. Hence she has entered industry, not with expectations of long employment, but with hopes of a speedy release, and she has therefore been in haste to earn money at once, and unwilling to sink capital (either in time or money) in making herself efficient. She is found in the more mechanical and more easily acquired branches of work, and also in those which provide no future for men,[63] and her willingness to take low wages has been her great protection against competing machinery. She has preferred to remain incompetent. "Out of twenty-six girls," is the report from the manager of a well-known firm for high-class artistic bookbinding, "not one could he trust as a forewoman." [Footnote 63: An interesting illustration of this is afforded by the recent employment of women in typefounding in London. London has not been a place where women were much employed in this industry. For twenty or thirty years girls have been employed in Edinburgh typefoundries, at certain processes through which the type, when cast, has to go, but they have been introduced only within the last year or two in London, to take the place of boys who could not be got because the work offers no very satisfactory prospects for them, and because the introduction of the linotype and mono-type threatens the future of the typefounding industry. _Cf._ Aberdeen, p. 47, Manchester and Birmingham, p. 50.] [Sidenote: The lack of openings and ambition.] Moreover, this enquiry has shown that there is but little chance for women in these trades to improve themselves. Openings for responsible employment are few, and the ambition of the woman is not stirred by the possibility of material improvement as the reward of skill and industry. When responsible places become vacant, it is sometimes difficult to get women to consent to fill them. They seem to have little of that divine discontent which is the mainspring of progress. "They never ask for a rise as a man would, ... though after a time when they are useful, the firm would be quite willing to give one." "He finds that girls want to earn a certain wage. As a rule they will not take less, and they don't trouble to earn more." A Manchester correspondent reports: "There is very little chance of rising, and no particular desire for it, on the part of the ordinary girl, whose main aspirations are otherwise directed."