rest upon any one class of
work, but must be constantly going from one thing to another. Hence
women have indeed acquired marvelous versatility, but at what a heavy
cost! The houseworker only rarely acquires perfect skill and deftness
or any considerable speed in performing any one process. Her
versatility is attained at the price of having no standards of
comparison established, and worse than all, at the price of working
in isolation, and therefore gaining no training in team-work, and so
never having an inkling of what organized effort means.

Our factory systems, on the other hand, go to the other extreme, being
so arranged that the majority of workers gain marvelous dexterity, and
acquire a dizzying rate of speed, while they are apt to lose in both
resourcefulness and versatility. They do not, however, suffer, to
anything like the same degree, from isolation, and factory life, even
where the employers are opposed to organization, does open a way to
the recognition of common difficulties and common advantages, and
therefore leads eventually in the direction of organization. In the
factory trades the workers have to some extent learnt to be vocal. It
is possible for an outsider to learn something of the inner workings
of an establishment. Upon the highly developed trades, the searchlight
of official investigation is every now and then turned. From
statistics we know the value of the output. We are also learning a
good deal about the workers, the environment that makes for health or
invalidism, or risk to life, and we are in a fair way to learn more.
The organized labor movement furnishes an expression, although still
imperfect, of the workers' views, and keeps before the public the
interests of the workers, even of the unorganized groups.

But with the domestic woman all this is reversed. In spite of the fact
that in numbers the home women far exceed the wage-earners, the value
of their output has been ignored, and as to the conditions under
which it is produced, not even the most advanced and progressive
statisticians have been able to arrive at any estimate. Of sentiment
tons have been lavished upon the extreme importance of the work of the
housewife in the home, sometimes, methinks, with a lingering misgiving
that she might not be too well content, and might need a little
encouragement to be induced to remain there. What adulation, too,
has been expended upon the work of even the domestic servant, with
compariso