INTRODUCTORY.
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eventually find their true place* in the world’s work as perpetuators and moulders of it, the student, as a mother and trainer of men, would be most valuable. Carry forward the student and worker to a condition where other standards than those of earth are dominant, and physical bonds are left behind, and the intrinsic individuality of each, being gauged by a supreme wisdom, will find an exact recognition a finite mind could not give.
But the dangers to female life and health from the special ills incident to industrial
* “ We have been studying woman, in her relation to the subject of this paper (professions and skilled labor), as a sexual being ; and, if we continue the study in the same direction, we must arrive at the conclusion that marriage is not an optional matter with her. On the contrary, it is a prime necessity to her normal physical and intellectual life. There is an undercurrent of impulse impelling every healthy woman to marry. That this is a law of her sexual being, we know by the positive evidence of medical men and others. We also know that the married woman exerts a more marked influence upon men, and society in general, than the celibate.”— Ely Van de Wabkek, M. D.: in Popular Science Monthly, February, 1875.