personal pleasure and individual independence. The family
solidarity which made the sons Democrats because their father voted
that party ticket, or the daughters Methodists because their mother's
religious preferences were for that denomination, has ceased to be
effective. Every member of the family has his daily occupations in
diverse localities. The head of the household may find his business
duties in the city twenty miles away, or on the road that leads him
far afield across the continent. For long hours the children are in
school. The housewife is the only member of the family who remains at
home and her outside interests and occupations have multiplied so
rapidly as to make her, too, a comparative stranger to the home life.
Modern industrialism has laid its hand upon the women and children,
and thousands of them know the home only at morning and night.

74. =The Strain on the Urban Family.=--The rapid growth of cities,
with the increase of buildings for the joint occupancy of a number of
families, tends to disunity in each particular family and to a
reduction in the size of families. The privacy and sense of intimate
seclusion of the detached home is violated. The modern apartment-house
has a common hall and stairway for a dozen families and a common
dining-room and kitchen on the model of a hotel. The tenements are
human incubators from which children overflow upon the streets,
boarders invade the privacy of the family bedroom, and even sanitary
conveniences are public. Home life is violated in the tenement by the
pressure of an unfavorable environment; it perishes on the avenue
because of a compelling desire to gain as much freedom as possible
from household care.

The care of a modern household grows in difficulty. Although the
housekeeper has been relieved of performing certain economic functions
that added to the burden of her grandmother, her responsibilities have
been complicated by a number of conditions that are peculiar to the
modern life of the town. Social custom demands of the upper classes a
far more careful observance of fashion in dress and household
furnishings, and in the exchange of social courtesies. The increasing
cost of living due to these circumstances, and to a constantly rising
standard of living, reacts upon the mind and nerves of the housewife
with accelerating force. And not the least of her difficulties is the
growing seriousness of the servant problem. Custom, social
obligations, a