In this sort of work the girl possessing initiative and an independent spirit will naturally do best, since there are comparatively few opportunities for such work under supervision.  Care must, however, be exercised by vocational guides in suggesting, and by girls in choosing, the independent career.  Usually it is the girl who has shown promise in independent work at school or at home that will make a success of such work later in life.  The girl who relaxes when the pressure of compulsion is removed will not be a success as “her own boss.”  It goes without saying that the girl who does well as her own superior officer will be happier to do work upon her own initiative than merely to carry out the plans made by others.  Agricultural work will sometimes offer her exactly the conditions she desires.  Many successful farm-owners are women, and their work compares favorably with that of men.

Food production.  It is common, in these days, to meet the assertion that the preparation of food, once woman’s undisputed work, has been almost if not quite removed from her hands; and that, even where she may still contribute to this work, she must do so in the factory, the bakery, the packing house, or the delicatessen shop.  There are, nevertheless, still many women who are fitted for cooking and kindred pursuits who will not find an outlet for their abilities in any of the places mentioned.  In the main, factory production of food is like factory production of other things—­a highly differentiated process, in which the individual worker finds little satisfaction for her desire to “make things” and little, if any, opportunity to contribute from her ability to the final result.

In the canning factory she may sit all day before an ever-moving procession of beans or peas, from which she removes any unsuitable for cooking.  Or it may be an endless procession of cans, upon which she rapidly lays covers as they pass.  In the pickle factory she may pack tiny cucumbers into bottles.  In the packing house she may perform the task of painting cans.  None of these occupations is more than mere unskilled labor.  None is suitable for the girl who likes to cook, and who can cook.  The number of such girls is already fairly large and will undoubtedly increase as the domestic science classes of our schools do more and better work.

[Illustration:  An up-to-date factory.  In the factory the work is necessarily routine, and the individual worker finds very little satisfaction for her desire to make things]

Opposed to the theoretical statement that food is or at least to-morrow will be prepared entirely in the public-utility plants outside the home is the practical fact that home-cooked food, home-preserved fruits and jellies, and home-canned vegetables and meats find ready sale and that women who can produce these things do find it profitable to do so.  There is, consequently, a field for some girls in such work.