That the home needs labor-saving devices in order that much of the disagreeable work may be eliminated is unquestioned.  Inventive genius has only given a fragmentary attention to the problems of the housewife.  Most of the devices in use are far beyond the means of the poor and even the lower middle class.  Furthermore, though they save labor many of them do not save time.  The tests by which the good household device ought to be judged are these: 

First—­Is it efficient?

Second—­Is it labor saving?

Third—­Is it time saving?

We need to break away from traditional cooking apparatus and traditional diet.  The installation and use of fireless cookers, self-regulating ovens, is a first step.  The discarding of most of the puddings, roasts, fancy dishes that take much time in the preparation and that keep the housewife in the kitchen would not only save the housewife but would also be of great benefit to her husband.  The cult of hearty eating, which results in keeping a woman (mistress or maid) in the kitchen for three or more hours that a man may eat for twenty or thirty minutes is folly.  The type of meal that either takes only a short time for preparation and devices which render the attention of the housewife unnecessary are ethical and healthy, both for the family and society.  The joys of the table are not to be despised, and only the dyspeptic or the ascetic hold them in contempt; but simplicity in eating is the very heart of the joy of the table.

Elaboration and gluttony are alike in this,—­they increase the housework and decrease the well-being of the diner.

How to maintain the sweetness of the family spirit of the home and yet bring into it a wider social spirit, break down its isolated individualistic character, is a problem I do not pretend to be able to solve.  Ancient nations emphasized the social-national aspect of life overmuch, as for example the Spartans; the modern home overemphasizes the family aspect.  We must avoid extremes by clinging to the virtues and correcting the vices of the home.

Alarmists are constantly raising the cry that marriage is declining and that society is thereby threatened at its very heart.  There is the pessimist who feels that the “irreligion” of to-day is responsible; there is the one who blames feminism; and there is the type that finds in Democracy and liberalism generally the cause of the receding old-fashioned morality.  Divorce, late marriage, and child-restriction are the manifestations of this decadence, and the press, the pulpit, science, and the State all have taken notice of these modern phenomena, though with widely differing attitudes.

That matrimony is changing cannot be questioned or denied.  The main change is that woman is entering more and more as an equal partner whose rights the modern law recognizes as the ancient law did not.  She is no longer to be classed as exemplified by the famous words of Petruchio, when he claimed his wife, the erstwhile shrew, as his property in exactly the same sense as any domestic animal, linking the wife with the horse, the cow, the ass, as the chattels of the man.  The law agreed to this attitude of the man, the Church supported it; woman, strangely enough, seemed to glory in it.