For instance, I know a fair woman in an Atlantic city who is at the head of a household including six children and nine servants.  The whole domestic management is placed absolutely in her hands:  she engages or dismisses every person employed, incurs every expense, makes every purchase, and keeps all the accounts; her husband only ordering the fuel, directing the affairs of the stable, and drawing checks for the bills.  Every hour of her morning is systematically appropriated to these things.  Among other things, she has to provide for nine meals a day; in dining-room, kitchen, and nursery, three each.  Then she has to plan her social duties, and to drive out, exquisitely dressed, to make her calls.  Then there are constantly dinner-parties and evening entertainments; she reads a little, and takes lessons in one or two languages.  Meanwhile her husband has for daily occupation his books, his club, and the above-mentioned light and easy share in the cares of the household.  Many men in his position do not even keep an account of personal expenditures.

There is nothing exceptional in this lady’s case, except that the work may be better done than usual:  the husband could not well contribute more than his present share without hurting domestic discipline; nor does the wife do all this from pleasure, but in a manner from necessity.  It is the condition of her social position:  to change it, she must withdraw herself from her social world.  A few improvements, such as “family hotels,” are doing something to relieve this class to whom luxury means labor.  The great undercurrent which is sweeping us all toward some form of associated life is as obvious in this new improvement in housekeeping, as in cooeperative stores or trades-unions; but it will nevertheless be long before the “women of society” in America can be anything but a hard-working class.

The question is not whether such a life as I have described is the ideal life.  My point is that it is, at any rate, a life demanding far more of energy and toil, at least in America, than the men of the same class are called upon to exhibit.  There is growing up a class of men of leisure in America; but there are no women of leisure in the same circle.  They hold their social position on condition of “an establishment,” and an establishment makes them working-women.  One result is the constant exodus of this class to Europe, where domestic life is just now easier.  Another consequence is that you hear woman suffrage denounced by women of this class, not on the ground that it involves any harder work than they already do, but on the ground that they have work enough already, and will not bear the suggestion of any more.

THE EMPIRE OF MANNERS