The
Canadian Girl at Work
A BOOK OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE
By
MARJORY MacMURCHY
Prepared at the Instance of the Minister of Education
for Use in Ontario School Libraries
Printed by Order of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario
TORONTO
Printed and Published by A. T. Wilgress,Printer to the King's Most
Excellent Majesty
1919
Copyright, Canada, 1919, by the
Minister of Education for Ontario
PREFACE
The object of The Canadian Girl at Work is to assist girls infinding satisfactory employment. The further aim of showing them whatconstitutes a right attitude toward work and toward life through work,underlies the account of each occupation. The book is meant for girls,and for the assistance of fathers and mothers, of teachers, and ofthose who are interested in questions of training and employment.
The life of the average woman is divided, generally, into two periodsof work, that of paid employment and that of home-making. No adequatescheme of training for girls can fail to take account of this fact.They should be equipped with knowledge and skill for home-making, andassisted in making the best use of their years in paid work. Happily,it appears from an investigation of the conditions affecting girls aswage-earners that the knowledge which helps them to be goodhome-makers is necessary to their well-being in paid employment.Technical training and skill are not more helpful to a girl at workthan specialized knowledge in matters of food, clothing, health, anddaily regimen. Lack of training in home-making is probably thegreatest drawback which a girl in paid employment can have. Herbusiness during her first years of paid employment may not requiremuch skill or experience, but her living conditions require all thespecialized woman's knowledge that training can give her.
To bring about in the life of a girl a satisfactory connection betweenpaid employment and home-making, and to show the home employments intheir rightful place as occupations of the first importance, arenecessary objectives in any book of this character.
When considering the employments of to-day as part of their own lives,girls of the twentieth century may well look back through the longages to women's work in the past.[1] The study of anthropology appearsto indicate that in primeval ages women began the textile industryand, possibly, agriculture. There seems to be no doubt that they wereprimitive architects, and that they tamed some of the smaller domesticanimals. They had most to do with the preparation of food and may haveintroduced the use of herbs and medicines. They were spinners,weavers, upholsterers, and sail-makers. Most of these employments weretaken up by men and specialized and developed almost past imagination.It is evident that women have always worked, and worked hard. If theyhad not done so, the race would not have reached its present position,and women themselves would have remained undeveloped, without arealization of their own possibilities.
The history of Anglo-Saxon times shows women engaged in spinning,weaving, dyeing, and embroidering, carrying on these industrial artsin the home, side by side with the work of the house. The work ofwomen in home manufactures was a by-industry, not occupying theworker's whole time, but nevertheless an important occupation. Later,women were employed in many kinds of ind