770.

The point to be made is that however faulty an official or Federal
standard for sanitary devices may be, it is a standard, and so is of
service in protecting the people, especially those away from active
centers of research.

CHAPTER IX

_There is responsibility as well as opportunity. The
housewife an important factor and an economic force in
improving the national health and increasing the national
wealth._

It would indeed seem that opposition to woman's
participation in the totality of life is a romantic
subterfuge, resting not so much on belief in the disability
of woman as on the disposition of man to appropriate
conspicuous and pleasurable objects for his sole use and
ornamentation. "A little thing, but all mine own," was one
of the remarks of Achilles to Agamemnon in their quarrel
over the two maidens, and it contains the secret of man's
world-old disposition to overlook the _intrinsic_ worth of
woman.

_W. I. Thomas, Women and Their Occupations, American Magazine,
October, 1909._

The president of the British Medical Association about 1892
said, "I wish to impress it upon you that the whole future
progress of sanitary movement rests, for its permanent and
executive support, upon the women of our land."

In a letter to Madame Bodichon, dated April 6, 1868, George
Eliot writes: "What I should like to be sure of as a result
of higher education for women--a result that will come to
pass over my grave--is their recognition of the great amount
of social _unproductive_ labor which needs to be done by
women, and which is now either not done at all or done
wretchedly."

_Quoted by Mrs. Nixon in a paper before the Conference of Women
Workers in England, 1904._

CHAPTER IX

WOMAN'S RESPONSIBILITY

There are about 40,000,000 women and girls in the United States. About
14,000,000 live in the country and have a direct and compelling power
over the life of the community.

In rural agricultural districts the home-keeper is the provider. She
practically requisitions from farm and garden what she deems necessary
for the family table. To an extent she makes the clothing and sews the
house linen. She also exchanges her perquisites, egg money, perhaps,
for furniture and ornaments. The itinerant peddler brings the world's
wares to her door; the mail-