people's feelings. For many, who would probably seek for the best qualified, person for any post with which they were themselves concerned, the need of the pay overshadows the importance of the work when they are thinking of the effect of competition apart from any particular post.
It should be remembered in connection with this question that the increased dignity of a profession entered for its own sake and not solely for pecuniary gain is advantageous to all who are in it. We all know from old novels how different from what it is now was the position of teachers in the days when for a lady born in comfortable circumstances to become one was usually a sign of failure. I think therefore most emphatically that there should be no difficulty felt about a woman of independent means taking paid work if it is the work she most desires or feels most fitted for. She will, however, of course thus become responsible for the spending of a larger income and will have to consider how it should be used. In a way in fact by earning she sets free her independent income.
But I must guard myself from possible misunderstanding in one respect. It is not, I think, right for a woman to compete in the open market and take less than the market price, enabled to do so by an allowance from her parents. That is not fair competition, and it tempts the employer to accept possibly inferior work because he can get it cheap. Well-to-do women are sometimes accused of acting thus. I am not sure that it really happens, but I am sure it would be undesirable that it should. We must, however, distinguish between taking paid work for less than the standard wage and taking work that is unpaid altogether, or from the nature of the case can only be partly paid. There is much important unpaid work to be done, and a good deal of work of a philanthropic kind, which is of course only open to those who have at least some means of their own. For those capable of it there is also much pioneer work to be done—work which, like Florence Nightingale's, alters the world's ideals—or which, like Mrs. Garrett Anderson's, makes new open-
