world at large, but to women themselves as a means of rounding out and balancing their lives, will lead to a different conception. A special trade, craft, profession, business, or form of public work will seem the end toward which the peculiar talent of a given woman should be directed, while housekeeping will appear, not as an end in itself, but as a means, the means which at a given stage of industrial development all women may find it necessary to employ if they would give expression to their love by making homes.

In this spirit of double appreciation we see that when the home-maker continues one of the activities of housekeeping after it has become unnecessary to good home-making, she unbalances her life by over-serving; that when she sacrifices home for the sake of a “career,” she destroys the equilibrium of her life by failing to find expression for the other-regarding desires. In this spirit alone can we view the changes which are going on in society, and separate those which tend to narrow and impoverish woman’s life from those which tend to broaden and enrich it.

Looking in this spirit, we see an advantage in boarding-house life because it reduces the amount of work necessary for cooking and serving food. We see another advantage in the reduction of the amount of superintendence when compared with the amount of work done. Housekeepers today are being nerve-racked by an amount of superintendence out of all proportion to the labor necessary for housekeeping. On the other hand, we see disadvantages in this kind of life because it is incompatible with the retirement that is necessary for mutual helpfulness, for successful child training, and for good fellowship. The adoption of a scientific and up-to-date modification of the “lodgings” system in vogue in England, or some other plan of professional catering for private families, might be the means of preserving the good in boarding-house life without perpetuating the evil.

We see in the increase of prepared foods upon the market a saving of labor but a menace to health. Women’s clubs, made possible partly because of the saving of time through the use of these foods, are largely responsible for the pure food laws that have been passed, and we are looking to them for an educational campaign which will result in further legislation and a better enforcement of present laws.

In the movement toward economic independence for woman, we see advantages and disadvantages. When it leads her to sacrifice home and motherhood and the opportunity to do work in which her soul delights rather than to be economically dependent, it enslaves her and her talents, for economic independence is worthless unless it brings expressional freedom; when it brings her the opportunity to do the work she loves and can do best, it frees her and her powers.

We see in the revival of handicraft tremendous significance to woman, because it opens up to her a great field of industries which offer activities for both hand and brain, and which can be carried on at home without interfering with the care of children. We see why it was necessary for the handicrafts to fall into disuse while we were working out the system of division of labor, which now, upon their revival, makes it possible for women to become more than mere amateurs in them. These and many other interesting movements we see in society, if we have our eyes open, both to the value of woman as a home-maker and to her value as an individual.

More life for woman—not through sacrifice of the joys of motherhood and home-making, but by the addition of the pleasures in satisfactory cultivation of special talents to the privileges of service.

MORE LIFE FOR MAN

THE changes which are enlarging woman’s educational privileges and are giving to her an opportunity to prepare herself for work not directly connected with the home, and which by simplifying housekeeping methods are making it possible for her to carry on such work in connection with home-making, may be said to be bringing more life to man, providing we understand the word life in its broad and not in its narrow sense, and providing we mean by man no particular individual nor class of individuals, but composite man.

The individual man may be inclined to dispute this statement. If so, it is probably because of one of two facts. Either he does not see life whole, and thinks only of what he has lost by woman’s progress and not of what he has gained, or he forgets that he is only a small part of composite man, and, as such, may fall below the average with respect to his joy in living.

If he likes homemade bread and is compelled to eat baker’s bread because his wife likes to study Dante better than to cook, he may think that he is not so well off as he would have been if he had lived a half century ago, when Dante classes for women and baker’s bread were practically unknown. But if he considers the advantages of eating his supper under the eaves, as it were, of the Dante class, and of having his baker’s bread flavored with drippings of information concerning the great poet and his times, he may conclude that baker’s bread with Dante sauce is more to him than homemade bread without it.

Or it may be that his doubt of the statement is due to the fact that his quota of life is below the average. Perhaps his wife goes off to her class and does not bring back to him the information and inspiration which she has received. If so, the trouble is not with the times, but with human nature. Selfishness always has existed and always will exist. If a man has a selfish wife, the only thing he can do to assure himself that men are really better off than they used to be is to look abroad and to see if, for every one like himself, there are not two others who are profiting by woman’s broadened life and who bring up the average of life for modern man above that of his middle-of-the-nineteenth-century brother.

To live, what is it? To be healthy, to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, to taste good tastes, to hear sweet sounds, to see beautiful sights, to learn, to do (if we object to the word “work” because it is sometimes applied to drudgery), and to love. The last is most important of all. It modifies all the rest, and they at times must be sacrificed to it. It is interpreted by all the rest, for only by knowing what we consider real life for ourselves can we know what our love should seek for others.

Taking the desire to love first, woman’s expanding life is making possible for man the expression of an ever better and higher form of affection. To see how this comes about, we must read the present in the light of the past.

There was a time when man’s work as well as woman’s was almost all directly connected with the home. He raised wheat, kept cows, pigs, and chickens, hewed timber, built his own house and barn, and gathered his own fuel, while she spun, dyed, wove, sewed, cooked, and cared for the house. Neither was then a specialist. Then came division of labor, which, however, affected man’s work more than woman’s. This made it possible for him to become a farmer, a carpenter, or a coal merchant, and to provide for the needs of his home by the fruits of his specialized labor instead of by direct labor, as he had done in earlier times. To woman there has never come any such privilege. Although her duties are much lightened, she must still be a housekeeper if she would be a home-maker.

One explanation that has been given for the differences in the courses that man’s and woman’s activities have taken is that woman is less progressive than man and more opposed to change. Another is that her work is so closely connected with personal needs and has associated with it so much of sentiment that it cannot be delegated to outsiders. Whatever the cause may be, the average married man’s work today has certain distinct advantages over the average married woman’s. It is more varied and more