of patients is threatened because of what seems to be an alarming shortage of applicants for training." I need not multiply quotations. If any of us have escaped this embarrassment, let us be thankful. So general is the admission of this fact, that many of our most thoughtful men and women are seeking to explain it. Just about a year ago Miss Charlotte A. Aiken conducted a symposium on this subject in THE NATIONAL HOSPITAL RECORD. She wrote to certain hospital superintendents and supervisors of training schools, asking them two questions:

First “What, in your opinion, are the chief reasons for the decrease in the supply of candidates for the training schools for nurses?"

Second-"Have you any suggestion as to how this condition might be changed?"

She seemed to take it for granted that there was a shortage and no one disputed her position. Among those from whom she received replies were Mrs. Anna M. Lawson, of the General Memorial Hospital in New York; Miss Mary S. Gilmore, of Blackwell's Island, New York; Miss Jennie S. Cottle, of Zanesville, Ohio; Miss Mary Keith, of the Rochester City Hospital, and Miss Minnie Goodnow, of Milwaukee. I should like to give their letters in full, but that is out of the question in this paper. I only suggest the reasons which they gave:

"The number of new avenues open to women of education; the widely published drudgery of the life of a nurse; the length of the course, three years being considered too long, by a great many women; poor food, long hours, crowded sleeping apartments; theoretical teaching by incompetent teachers; women trying to govern who are unable to govern themselvs, much less a school; the difficult studies; the published curriculum, which frightens those who have lost the habit of study."

A great many of the best candidates have been employees for years. They have brains and ability, but their scholarship is rusty, and the announcement of a high standard disheartens them. They know they are unequal to written examinations and therefore they seek a livelihood in some other direction. I am not saying at this moment that the course should be shortened, but whether it should be or not,

there is no doubt in my mind that the height of the standard deters many..

Now for a moment let us glance at the very able paper by Miss Palmer, to which I have already referred. Her position should give great weight to anything she has to say on this subject. She gives several reasons, two of which were given by others in the symposium quoted. Her third reason was this: "In the early days of the training school we drew largely from Canada, but the multiplication of hospitals in Canada has cut off this supply." I am glad to be able to say, not wholly so, for many of our best nurses are still Canadian girls. "The most serious cause," Miss Palmer says, "is the failure of the majority of our hospitals, both large and small, and in every State, to meet fully those obligations which a three years' course implies." She states that, "the three years' course was instituted upon the recommendation of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools, and that with its extension it was understood that the hours of service were to be reduced from ten and twelve hours to eight and nine hours, that skilled teachers should be provided, that the domestic drudgery should be lightened by the employment of ward maids and cleaning women, and that the food should be improved." Upon this I would remark that it may be true that the various hospitals entered into an agreement with the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools, but I never heard of it before. On the other hand, I have always heard it charged that commercialism led the various boards of trustees to extend the term to three years, so I am pleased in the interest of exact history to have the trustee boards freed from the charge of commercialism-an ungracious charge when you remember that hospital boards are not making money out. of the hospital, but are sacrificing both time and money in its interests.

Again, Miss Palmer more than suggested that the young women will not enter hospital service "because of its hardships and privations, its physical and mental strain, its long hours of work and insufficient diet." With due respect to Miss Palmer, I think she has unwittingly overstated the case, a thing to be regretted, because it will have a tendency to deter young women from taking up this work. I should need more proof than has been printed as yet to make me

believe that nurses, as a rule, are under undue strain, either mental or physical; or that they suffer because of long hours or insufficient food. As to the food, we all tire of institutional fare, no matter how good its general average may be. As to long hours, so far as I can see, every possible effort is being made to act justly in this matter. In a few hospitals there are three relays of nurses so as to make the working day eight hours in length. In Johns Hopkins Hospital there are eight hours, with two relays of nurses, the nursing program being given by Dr. Hurd in his recent paper on "The Proper Length of the Period of Training for Nurses." In many hospitals, where there are but two relays of nurses and no attempt made at the eight-hour plan, the two relays are so handled that entire satisfaction is given to the nurses. Take for example my own hospital, which I do not think is exceptional: We have two relays of nurses, the day nurses being technically on duty twelve hours, but out of that they have one hour for meals and two hours for rest, and so far as possible no recitations are allowed to interfere with those two hours-that is, they have a nine-hour day. Then again, they have a half day on Sunday and a half day during the week.

It is true the night nurses are on duty twelve hours, but it is also true that at the close of their night term they have four days vacation (one-half a day for each week), which all appreciate, feeling that they are well cared for. Therefore, I conclude that our nurses have no unusual hardships, their hours are not longer than those of other young women who have to earn their living, and when they leave us, as a rule there are in better physical condition than when they come. So, I think, it is a mistake to ring the changes upon their hardships and thus discourage others from taking up the work.

Miss Palmer brings her arguments, in which she magnifies the hardships of the nurse, to a close in the following language: "The nurse returns home and advises her young sisters or the daughters of friends not to enter the nursing field." Possibly Miss Palmer may have facts on hand to justify her position; if so, she should speak as emphatically as she has done, but our experience is that the older sisters go home and bring or send their younger sisters, while at

the same time they encourage the young women of the neighborhood to enter their alma mater.

In my opinion, there are two or three causes for the shortage of nurses which have not received sufficient, if any, emphasis: First, the time was that applicants were received when there was a vacancy at any time throughout the year. That method is either passing or has already passed away in many schools. I will not enter into a discussion of the advantages or disadvantages that come from receiving all the nurses at one or two set periods during the year. There are reasons for and against this plan. I am simply stating a fact. However, this I believe is true, many a fine girl slips through your fingers while you are waiting for your spring or fall term to open. Here is a girl just through school, or for some reason is dissatisfied with her present position. She makes application, is accepted and instructed to come at the beginning of the next term, which is three or four months later, but more than likely she cannot afford to wait, for very few of our applicants are women of independent means, so she becomes a teacher or a stenographer or a private secretary, and is lost to the training school. The old plan would have secured her, the new one sidetracks her. This, I believe to be a very strong reason for the shortage of nurses.

There is another reason of still greater importance. Do we treat our nurses with sufficient respect? We talk of the rights of this one and of that, the rights of the superintendent, doctors, supervisor, employees, but we say very little about the rights of the nurse. What I mean is this. if you dismiss a doctor or superintendent or supervisor, or an orderly, or a ward maid, you will give the reasons for such dismissal. I was greatly impressed by the language of Mr. Bacon last year when he said that every employee had a right to come to him and speak for himself before his dismissal could be consummated. Over against that spirit, I desire to place a letter written by the supervisor of a training school, and indorsed editorially, which appeared in one of our nursing journals. She jubilantly reported concerning the training of her nurses, stating also concerning some, that when they were unsatisfactory "out they go."' I did not like the spirit of that supervisor, and I did not like to see her letter receiving editorial indorsement. Give

me Mr. Bacon's method of dealing with employees, rather than the "out she goes" spirit. I fear that this spirit to some extent is in the rules and regulations of not a few of our training school. Some of them specifically state that a nurse may be dismissed at any time without explanation or reason. I wish to protest against this practice here. It is un-American. It is not the spirit of either country represented in this convention. The nurse has some rights, as well as the hospital. Such a nurse would naturally go home and warn her sisters and friends against such a school. It is against this spirit that Miss Cottle so vigorously protests in her symposium letter. I wonder if that is not a real reason for the shortage of nurses? A nurse is worthy of respect, and she should receive it. Let me tell you how one hospital safeguards the rights of the nurse while protecting their own interests: In the first place, she cannot be received on probation without the concurrence of the superintendent of the hospital, and she cannot be accepted as a full member of the training school without his approval. This latter is also the rule at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Boston City Hospital. In the hospital I have in mind, when a nurse has completed her probationary term, she comes before the hospital superintendent, who explains to her the rules and regulations of the institution. This gives him an oppor tunity to call attention to a nurse's duty to the patient, physician, office, supervisor, superintendent, etc. Some nurses need encouragement, some need restraint, and all need sympathetic consideration. If she agrees to the rules, she signs the certificate. If the supervisor recommends her for admission she signs it, and then if the superintendent is satisfied, he affixes his signature in the name of the board of managers. After that she cannot be dismissed from the school without an opportunity to appear before the training school committee to speak for herself.

I wish to observe also that the short-course schools must be reckoned with. We may anathematize them as much as we please, but that will not stop them. If we would get rid of them, we must furnish a good substitute for them.

It was Mendelssohn who said, "I do not wish to hear so much criticism of music; I want the critic to compose some music." It was Michael Angelo who said, when asked to