The daily progressive-miner., 1916-06-03
IS YOUR WORK A
 MERE MAkESHIFT? ARE YOU JUST HANGING ON A LIMB WAITING FOR
 MATRiMONY?
(By Mary E. Walker.)

l woke up yesterday. For Is years I imagined I. was peach hanging temptingly from my parent limb wait. ing to be plucked. l thought l was clinging to the thin stem of pro fessior as an excuse not to cast my self at the head of the first man who passed by.
 At 16 my parents decided l should prepare for self-support. School teaching seemed eminently respect able and had an idea that it couldn't interfere with chances for matrimony. entered the normal school with light hearted conviction that teaching wouldn't last long. 1 finished credit ably, not from hard work, for it seem ed useless to overstudy when l be- lieved matrimony was waiting for me round the first corner Yet how shocked I was when school lecturer told us most girls in the trades were professional failures because they worked only as means of support till man came along to furnish 1t!
 I saved no salary my first year as a teacher in another town. I sent some to mother, spent the rest on myself and borrowed from father to get home. I didn't say in words, Why should I save when I hope to be married?" but that was my uncon- scious thought.
 Vacations l enjoyed t home or at each fall with no more professional or general knowledge than the day l graduated. I wasn't hunting a man! would have been angry if any one had suggested it. I fancy many girls feel the same way.
 I asked for a larger salary my third year. It was refused. Then, through lack of funds, there came the question of letting one teacher go. I could best be spared, since, l was told, I didn't seem to have vital in terest in my work. Not fiattering professionally How many girls who work have thought deeply enough to see the invisible husband as the req son for their being "let go?"
 Soon afterward better position came through fathers political in fiuence. I had good pay and easy hours. wore some stunning clothes, made some lovely underwear, and cul- tivated social life. 1 read no books on method, no professional magazine that would put me in touch with edu- cational movements. Educated and professional woman that 1 was, 1 was standing still just as I would have stood still mentally had my uncon- scious inclination been satisfied and a husband plucked me from my parent limb
 lost that position by a reversal of political influence. Instead of going on to a better one 1 went back to the cheap sort of school in which l had begun. Yet my hopes weren't dashed. I knew there was the inevitable fem mine way out-matrimony.
 For my 22nd birthday father had given me 10 shares in building and loan association. I kept up payment for several years, scattered and un. businesslike, convinced it was my right to be supported by husband.
 wonder what would become of the teaching profession if all the girls who enter 1t waited as ardently for matri- mony as 1 did?
 When fathers failure came wasn't prepared to help him financially. h. deed, I remember I had said to him years before, Don't count on a girls help, she is likely to get married any time" In the face of my own self-ac- cusation I insist that every natural girl has some such idea in the back of her cranium,. unless she's suf- fraget from the cradle. It is how the girl manages the idea that is the test of her.