Art and Handcraft in the Woman's Building
of the World's Columbian Exposition

46 ART AND HANDICRAFT old idea that woman’s work in the higher fields is something phenomenal obtained both with the critics and with the women workers themselves. To-day the struggle for bread has become so fierce that no allowance is made for sex. We are at the dawn of a new era, when woman’s labor shall be judged by the same inflex- ible standard of excellence as man’s. Surely we may be excused if we have shown a little too much enthusiasm on this subject, for the gain is an immense one, not to woman alone, but to the whole race. There is no gain without a corresponding loss. There is no advance in which something is not left behind. In our country woman lias always been a privileged person; and while we hold DRAGON PLATE. Parsons & Brown. United States. that rights are higher than privileges, it can not be denied that it is a little trying to see those privi- leges steadily diminish- ing; but it has now become a question of necessity, not of choice. The results of our public-school system are shown in the enormous number of men who are fitted for both the higher and lower branches of in- tellectual labor. A few months ago a gentleman in New York advertised in the same paper for a secretary and a butler. Five hundred applicants appeared for the secretaryship and two for the place of the butler. Competition in brain labor is so fierce, the price it secures so small, that to-day a large proportion of our artists, architects, literary and professional men. find it impossible to sup- port their families in the position to which their education entitles them. Every year it is becoming more expensive to live the life of cultivated people. The price of bread and meat and coal may be reduced as the demand for these articles increases, but the price of the luxuries and the graces of life increases in an exact ratio with the increase of population. A professional man, the son of a professional man, is too often faced with this problem: “ How can I give my children as good an education as I myself received, when my income is only as large as my father’s was and the expenses