ive to awaken the housewife to the realization that
something must be wrong in her present methods. It is in vain that she
complains bitterly, on all occasions, of the scarcity of good servants,
asserting that it is beyond her comprehension why work in factories,
stores, and offices, should be preferred to the work she offers.

Is it beyond her comprehension? Or has she never considered in what way
the work she offers differs from the work so eagerly accepted? Does she
not realize that the present laws of labor adopted in business are very
different from those she still enforces in her own home? Why does she
not compare housework with all other work in which women are employed,
and find out why housework is disdained by nearly all self supporting
women?

Instead of doing this, she sometimes avoids the trouble of trying
to keep house with incompetent employees by living in hotels, or
non-housekeeping apartments; but for the housewife who does not possess
the financial means to indulge herself thus, or who still prefers home
life with all its trials to hotel life, the only alternative is to
submit to pay high wages for very poor work or to do a great part of the
housework herself. In both cases the result is bad, for in neither does
the family enjoy the full benefit of home, nor is the vexatious problem,
so often designated as the "servant question," brought any nearer to a
solution.

The careful study of any form of labor invariably reveals some need of
amelioration, but in none is there a more urgent need of reform than in
domestic labor in private homes.

It is more for the sake of the housewife than for her employee that a
reform is to be desired. The latter is solving her problem by finding
work outside the home, while the former is still unduly harassed by
household troubles. With a few notable exceptions, only those who are
unqualified to compete with the business woman are left to help the
householder, and the problem confronting her to-day is not so much how
to change inefficient to efficient help, but how to obtain any help at
all.

The spirit of independence has so deeply entered into the lives of
women of all classes, that until housework be regulated in such a way
as to give to those engaged in it the same rights and privileges as are
granted to them in other forms of labor, the best workers will naturally
seek employment elsewhere.

THE DISADVANTAGES OF HOUSEWORK COMPARED WITH WORK IN FACTORIES, STO