porary and superficial ills for permanent and deepseated diseases? Shorter hours and better sanitary arrangements in factories will undoubtedly follow the entrance of large numbers of women into industry, and the organization of female workers into strong labor organizations affiliated with those of men. Thus the peculiar evils of factory work will be diminished.

Industrial history unmistakably points to the conclusion that woman's household industry is doomed. Little will permanently remain, and what does remain can, in a large measure, be most efficiently performed by specialized workers going from one household to another. Household work when thus performed will attain a professional dignity which has hitherto been entirely lacking. Scrubbing and baking, brewing and sewing on a small scale cannot be as readily dignified as when performed on a large scale. Scientific precision and expert knowledge may find profitable application to these occupations when performed on a large scale. The chief cook in a large hotel or apartment house may well rank in professional standing alongside the physician. The operators of a compressed air carpet cleaner are a grade above the man with the wire carpet beater. The worker in an airy, well-ventilated garment factory is more expert than the sewing-machine operator in the sweat shop, or in the home dressmaking establishment. The two important questions are: How can industry be so modified as to make it healthful for workers whether they be men or women? How can women

be best prepared for industrial and professional occupations under the new conditions? The first question must be answered by means of legislation and trade unionism, the second by our educational authorities.

If these two problems are resolutely studied there is no good historical reason for believing that racial deterioration must be the inevitable result of woman's work outside the home. The mothers in all nations, when the latter were at the summit of their national strength, have invariably been workers, not idlers or parasites. One of the dangers which flow out of the enormous multiplication in wealth production in modern times is idleness-parasitism— on the part of large classes of men and women. In the past history of the world parasitism affected only a small percentage of the population. But in recent years the productive capacity of society has so increased that, with proper adjustment of work and equitable distribution of the products of labor, hunger and famine need no longer be feared by the masses in Western countries. Unfortunately, as hunger and famine retire into the background, a new menace-sex and class parasitism on a wholesale scale-confronts society. In the case of inferior animals, as well as in the case of human beings, the strong, true, normal mother has ever been a worker. Idleness begets degeneracy in woman as well as in man, and the idleness of the woman is the more dangerous to the welfare of the race. "Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and the degeneration of a race; the

In

parasitism of its child-bearing women must." short, working women, not women of leisure, have normal instincts. Only working women can be the mothers of a strong and vigorous race. "Our problem is so to adapt the world to the woman who works that she may combine motherhood with industry." The crux of the "woman problem" and one important factor in the question of "race suicide" lies wrapped up with the contraction of the sphere of woman's work. The outward expression of parasitism among the well-to-do of the present era is found in such phenomena as bridge whist parties, sensational banquets, automobile races, horse shows and various other forms of dissipation and lust; or in the case of those only partially on the road toward parasitism, expression is found in some form of intellectual or manual "make-work," or in the needless complication of relatively simple duties. The vital evils are, however, deeply hidden, and manifest themselves more slowly in point of time.

Woman, herself, is not oblivious to the danger of her position. She has given voice to the cry: "Give us work, or we perish." "We demand that in that new strange world which is arising alike. upon men and women, where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and relations, we demand that in this new world we also shall have our share of honored and socially useful

1 Olive Schreiner, Cosmopolitan, Vol. 28: 192. See also Parsons, The Family, pp. 346-7, 354.

2 Commander, The American Idea, p. 268.

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human toil, our half of the labor of the children of woman. Economic considerations and the necessities of racial progress demand that woman continue, but under new conditions, to be an industrial worker. One of the most important functions of education in the decades which lie just ahead will be to aid in adjustir g industrial affairs so that industrial or professional activity may not be inimical to motherhood.

1 Schreiner, Cosmopolitan, Vol. 28:54.

CHAPTER VI

EDUCATION OF WOMEN

The home and the school are two great bulwarks which have safeguarded Occidental civilization and culture. Other institutions have indeed made valuable contributions, but to the home and the school we are indebted for the noblest fruits of Western development. Although we may revere and honor either or both, it must not be forgotten or overlooked that these words do not stand for fixed and unyielding concepts; these two institutions are ever in a state of mobility and fluxion. As the years pass by, all industrial and social institutions undergo constant change; the relative importance and value of this function of one increases, while that function of another decreases. A readjustment is necessary in order to meet the new situation satisfactorily. Progress is changegrowth on the one hand, decay on the other. New functions and duties devolve upon certain social institutions, and some of the old functions are gradually transferred from one institution to another. New inventions, new methods of rapid transportation, increased trade, the growth of cities, have changed radically and almost fundamentally the relations existing between the home and the