material or
social needs]

A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great
increase of city homes. Urban conditions are almost without exception
detrimental to home life. Congestion means discomfort within the home
and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or
social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for
satisfying these needs outside the home. Family life under such
conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of
solidarity which makes the dwelling place a home. No longer the place
where work is done, no longer the place where common interests are
shared, the home becomes only "the place where I eat and sleep," or
perhaps merely "where I sleep." The great increase of urban life
during the last half century is thus a very real menace, and, since
the agricultural communities constantly feed the towns, the menace
concerns the country-as well as the city-dweller.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
In the cities there are increasing opportunities for satisfying
material and social needs outside the home]

Believing that for the good of coming generations the true home spirit
must be saved, we shall do well to admit at once that the old-time
home was an institution suited to its own day, but that we cannot now
call it back to being. Nor would we wish to do so. There is no
possible reason for wishing our women to spin, weave, knit, bake,
brew, preserve, clean, _if_ the products she formerly made can be
produced more cheaply and more efficiently outside the home.

There is danger, however, of generalizing too soon in regard to these
industries. There is little doubt that in some directions, at least,
the factory method has not yet brought really satisfactory results.
How many women can give you reasons _why_ they believe that it no
longer "pays" to do this or that at home as they once did? Do the
factories always turn out as good a product as the housekeeper? If
they do, does the housekeeper obtain that product with as little
expenditure as when she made it? If she spends more, can she show that
the leisure she has thus bought has been a wise purchase? Is she
justified in accepting vague generalizations to the effect that it is
better economy to buy than to make, or should she test for herself,
checking up her individual conditions and results?

The fact is that the pendulum has swung away from the "homemade"
article, and most of us ha