and that is one reason why she has rebelled. It does not matter whether
you are a solicitor, an archbishop, or a burglar, the savor goes out of
your profession if it is not publicly esteemed at its true worth. We
have heard of celebrated impostors, of celebrated politicians, but who
has ever heard of a celebrated housekeeper?

The modern complaint of woman is that the care of the house has divorced
her from growing interests, from literature and, what is more important,
from the newspaper, partly from music, entirely from politics. It is a
purely material question; there are only twenty-four hours in every day,
and there are some things one cannot hustle. One can no more hustle the
English joint than the decrees of the Supreme Court. Moreover, and this
is a collateral fact, an emptiness has formed around woman; while on
the one side she was being tempted by the professions that opened to
her, by the interests ready to her hand, the old demands of less
organized homes were falling away from her. Once upon a time she was a
slave; now she is a half-timer, and the taste of liberty that has come
to her has made her more intolerant of the old laws than she was in the
ancient days of her serfdom. Not much more than seventy years ago it was
still the custom in lower middle-class homes for the woman to sew and
bake and brew. These occupations were relinquished, for the distribution
of labor made it possible to have them better done at a lower cost.

In the 'fifties and the 'sixties the great shops began to grow, stores
to rise of the type of Whiteley and Wanamaker. Woman ceased to be
industrial, and became commercial; her chief occupation was now
shopping, and if she were intelligent and painstaking she could make a
better bargain with Jones, in Queen's Road, than with Smith, in
Portchester Street. But of late years even that has begun to go; the
great stores dominate the retail trade, and now, qualities being equal,
there is hardly anything to pick between universal provider Number 1, at
one end of the town, and Number 2, equally universal, at the other.
Also the stores sell everything; they facilitate purchases; the
housekeeper need not go to ten shops, for at a single one she can buy
cheese, bicycles, and elephants. That is only an indication of the
movement; the time will come, probably within our lifetime, when the
great stores of the towns will have crushed the small traders and turned
them into branch managers; when all