g boards of labor
arbitration, a right that the backward majority of the Reichstag took
away again from them in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and
ninety.

What sot would seek to annul the changes just described, although the
fact is not to be gainsaid that, there are also dark sides to the bright
sides of the picture, consequent upon our seething and decaying
conditions? The bright sides, however, predominate. Women themselves,
however conservative they are as a body, have no inclination to return
to the old, narrow, patriarchal conditions of former times.

In the United States society still stands, true enough, on bourgeois
foundations; but it is forced to wrestle neither with old European
prejudices nor with institutions that have survived their day. As a
consequence American society is far readier to adopt new ideas and
institutions that promise advantage. For some time the position of
woman has been looked upon from a viewpoint different than ours. There,
for instance, the idea has long taken hold that it is not merely
troublesome and improper, but not even profitable to the purse, for the
wife to bake bread and brew beer, but that it is unnecessary for her to
cook in her own kitchen. The private kitchen is supplanted by
co-operative cooking, with a large central kitchen and machinery. The
women attend to the work by turns, and the meals generally come out
cheaper, taste better, offer a greater variety, and give much less
trouble. Our army officers, who are not decried as Socialists and
Communists, act on a similar plan. They establish in their casinos a
co-operative kitchen; appoint a steward, who attends to the supply of
victuals on a large scale; the bill of fare is arranged in common; and
the food is prepared in the steam kitchen of the barracks. They live
much cheaper than in a hotel, and fare at least as well. Furthermore,
thousands of the rich families live the whole year, or part of the year,
in boarding-houses or hotels, without in any way missing the private
kitchen. On the contrary, they consider it a great convenience to be rid
of it. The aversion of especially well-to-do women towards all matters
connected with the kitchen does not seem to indicate that this function
either belongs to the category of the "natural calling" of woman. On the
contrary, the circumstance that princely and other prominent families do
like the hotels, and all of them engage male cooks for the preparation
of the