The _Survey_, in an editorial, also quotes in refutation of the
seven-year theory, the findings of the commission which inquired
into the pay of teachers in New York. The commissioners found that
forty-four per cent. of the women teachers in the public schools had
been in the service for ten years or more, and that only twenty-five
per cent. of the men teachers had served as long a term.

It can hardly be doubted that the tendency is towards the lengthening
of the wage-earning life of the working-woman. A number of factors
affect the situation, about most of which we have as yet little
definite information. There is first, the gradual passing of the
household industries out of the home. Those women, for whom the
opportunity to be thus employed no longer is open, tend to take up or
to remain longer in wage-earning occupations.


The changing status of the married woman, her increasing economic
independence and its bearing upon her economic responsibility, are all
facts having an influence upon woman as a wage-earning member of the
community, but how, and in what degree, they affect her length of
service, is still quite uncertain. It is probable too, that they
affect the employment or non-employment of women very differently in
different occupations, but how, and in what degree they do so is mere
guess-work at present.

Much pains has been expended in arguing that any system of vocational
training should locally be co-related with the industries of the
district. Vain effort! For it appears that the workers of all ages are
on the move all the time. Out of 22,027 thirteen-year-old boys in the
public schools of seventy-eight American cities, only 12,699, or a