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 have not taken the trouble to investigate whether we are benefited or harmed.  It may be that investigation will show us that the pendulum has swung too far, and that, in spite of factories mechanically equipped to serve us, some work may be done much more advantageously at home.  It is even possible, and in some lines of work we know that it is a fact, that homes may be mechanically equipped at very little cost to rival and even to outclass the factory in producing certain kinds of products for home consumption.

Spinning, weaving, and knitting are doubtless best left in the hands of the factory worker.  But, under present conditions, buying ready made all the garments needed for a family may be an expensive and unsatisfactory method if the elements of worth, wear, finish, and individuality are worthy of consideration, just as buying practically all foodstuffs “ready made” presents a complex and disturbing problem to the fastidious and conscientious housewife.  There is at least a possibility that it would be as well for the home of to-day to retain or resume, systematize, and perfect some of the industries that are slipping or have already slipped from its grasp.  It is possible to reduce some processes to a too purely mechanical basis.