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PREFACE In the capacity of lecturer, employed by the Ontario Government for the Women‘s Institutes, it has been my privilege to come into very close contact with the workings of women‘s meetings of various kinds and with varying interests. While the aims and intentions of those interested were all that could be desived, one could not fail to realize the waste there was in time, energy, ability, material, and money, on account of the lack of proper business methods. | In the early training of a day that is gone, education in the business and proper conduct of meetings was not deemed a necessity for women. As the need of such knowledge made ifself more and more felt, requests for information and inâ€" struction came to me on every hand, and appeals for personal help were much too numerous for private correspondence. To meet a definite need, the Superintendent of Institutes requested me to write a manual of procedure containing the elementary rules for the conduct of public meetâ€" ings. I did this, and, at his further request, reâ€" vised and extended the manual. (i)