ns in plenty unfavorable to the factory occupations into
which girls still persist in drifting. Yet in freedom and in social
status, two of the tests by which to judge the relative desirability
of occupations, the paid domestic employments take inferior ranks.
Again, they offer little prospect of advance, for they lead nowhere.

Further, as noted in an earlier chapter in the census reports all
women returning themselves as engaged in domestic duties (not being
paid employes), were necessarily not listed as gainfully employed. Yet
it is impossible to believe that compared with other ways of employing
time and energy, the hours that women spend in cooking and cleaning
for the family, even if on unavoidably primitive lines, have no value
to the community. Or again, that the hours a mother spends in caring
for her baby, later on in helping with the lessons, and fitting the
children for manhood or womanhood, have no value in the nation's
account book. I will be reminded that this is an unworthy way of
reckoning up the inestimable labors of the wife and mother. Perhaps
so. Yet personally, I should much prefer a system of social economics
which could estimate the items at a fair, not excessive value, and
credit them to the proper quarter.

A well-known woman publicist recently drew attention to the vast
number of the women engaged in domestic life, and expressed regret
that organizations like the National Women's Trade Union League
confined their attention so exclusively to the women and girls
employed in factories and stores, who, even today, fall so far short
numerically of their sisters who are working in the home or on
the farm. The point is an interesting one, but admits of a ready
explanation. Every movement follows the line of least resistance,
and a movement for the industrial organization of women must first
approach those in the most advanced and highly organized industries.
As I have shown, we really know very much more about the conditions of
factory workers than of home-workers. The former have, in a degree,
found their voice, and are able to give collective expression to their
common interests.

The League recently urged upon the Secretary for Labor, the
recognition, as an economic factor, of the work of women in the
household trades; the classification of these occupations, whether
paid or unpaid, on a par with other occupations, and lastly, that
there be undertaken a government investigation of domestic serv