work borders on this kind of activity. He is a teacher and loves his profession, but in order to do his work satisfactorily he ought to have time for independent study and research. If there were fewer papers to correct, a little less routine, he might have time for original work which would leaven all the rest. Or perhaps he is a draftsman working all day at monotonous tasks, but amid surroundings that inspire him to do some work on his own account, and to grow in his profession. The wide-awake, educated woman has it in her power frequently to become conversant with her husband’s work, to lessen his drudgery, and, having saved him a little time for original work, to make it go further than it otherwise would because of her intelligent coöperation and assistance.

If living consists in being healthy, in enjoying the pleasures of the senses, in learning, in doing, and in loving, modern man stands a better chance of living than his predecessor did. The reasons are many, and not the least of them is the fact that his wife lives more.

Nor is the end in sight. If women’s opportunities to prepare themselves for and to enter upon careers unconnected with the home multiply in the future as they have in the past, men may be called upon to adjust themselves to much more radical changes. But the indications are that these changes will offer to them further opportunities for the expression of disinterested affection and larger lives through the expansion of the lives of those they love.

MORE LIFE FOR THE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYEE

“I WILL accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.” In these words of Walt Whitman’s can all of us who cherish the democratic ideal of equality of privilege and opportunity express our feelings with regard to domestic service, for when we are able to rise above the trials and tribulations that the institution brings to ourselves and to look upon it from an impersonal point of view, we find that the chief source of our dissatisfaction with it is in the fact that it gives benefits to one class by taking their counterpart from another.

The popular toleration of domestic service is due to a misapplication of the theory that the family is the unit of society. This theory has, in the past, played an important part in social evolution by calling attention to and emphasizing the family relation. It has, however, led to many undemocratic practices. This has been not so much because of anything wrong with the theory, as because it has not been supported by a clear conception of the value of the individual life. Thus unsupported, it has, by allowing itself to become entangled with the theory that man is the logical representative of the family in society, taken from woman the incentive to, and the opportunity for, independent action, and has also been responsible for the grossest infringements of her property rights. Thus unsupported, too, it has, by emphasizing the family as an institution, rather than the right of the individual to the family relation, led to the condoning of the maintenance of certain families at the expense of the freedom of individuals to enter into the family relation. Thus in slave times the family connections of the blacks were ruthlessly shattered in order to provide the service that was thought necessary to preserve the family life of the whites.

A better working theory, and one that is less likely to lead to undemocratic practices, is the one that sees in the individual the unit, and in the family relation one of the most important means for promoting his happiness and social usefulness. Such a view of the value of the individual and of the importance of the family relation leads logically to the conception of the obligation of the individual who accepts the privileges of the family relation so to adjust his life to the lives of the other members of his family group as to preserve their individual freedom, and to coöperate with them in the effort so to adjust the group to the social order as not to interfere with the freedom of other individuals to enter into and to maintain the family relation.

In the light of this view of society, domestic service looms up most undemocratic. It is so ordered as to bring a combination of benefits to a privileged class. This combination consists of the opportunity to live in retirement with those to whom they are bound by kinship or affection or by both, and thus to transform the places where they eat and sleep into homes, and the privilege of getting rid of the multiple activities which the maintenance of separate homes involves, the cooking, cleaning, etc., and of being able to engage in activities of their choice, and to secure leisure for social intercourse.

This combination of privileges is at present secured at the expense of a corresponding combination of privileges in the serving class. The result is three distinct disabilities for this class. The first, which arises from the fact that the domestic servant has not free choice of residence, and must accept the external form of home where her employer has his real home, may be called ethical, because its most serious result is that it takes from her the opportunity for moral development that comes from home-making. The second is industrial, and arises from the fact that she must offer in exchange for wages no particular services, but her entire time, to be disposed of as her employer sees fit. The third, which arises from her intimate personal relation to her employer, is social, and results in the determination of her position in society, not by her worth nor by her qualifications for social intercourse, but by her position as a member of the serving class.

These three disabilities on the part of the servants react on the employers, and bring them three forms of inconvenience. The first is a feeling of responsibility for the sex relations of the employee, a responsibility that is not felt with reference to those with whom the relation is a purely business one, such as the butcher, the grocer, the seamstress.

The second is the difficulty of making the servants “know and keep their places.” This leads at times to such serious dilemmas as the one in which the man found himself who appealed to Marion Harland, through her queries column in one of the daily papers, to know whether he ought to recognize his family servant on the street, and if so, whether he ought to lift his hat or merely to nod his head. One can imagine this poor man staying closely within his office on Thursday afternoons, if Marion Harland was not prompt with her reply, for fear that if he ventured forth upon the street he might on turning a corner come suddenly upon his household helper, and, being still unsupplied with a code of etiquette, not know how to conduct himself.

The third inconvenience to the employer is the lack in the servant of personal responsibility for good work, the inevitable result of time service.

To remove these three disabilities from the employee and the three inconveniences from the employer, certain changes in household administration must be made. First, the relation of mistress and servant must be changed to the more democratic one of employer and employee. Second, the work of the household must be so arranged as to allow a person to perform one service, such as cleaning, for many families, instead of many services for one family. Third, the work done in the home must be reduced, and then compressed within the limits of a reasonable working day, in order that it may not interfere with the home life of the employee.

For these modifications in household administration the changes that are going on outside of the home are paving the way. Public education is removing the stigma from domestic service by refusing to recognize class distinctions in the distribution of its benefits. Commerce, industry, science, and art are coöperating to reduce the amount of work necessarily done in the