Some of the reasons for this change are so clear that it seems as though they might have been anticipated.  In a comparatively few years the greater part of Western Europe and all of America has become rich, not this time through the enslavement of other peoples and the confiscating of their wealth, but through the enslaving and exploitation of the material forces of nature.  This wealth is not well distributed, but large numbers of families have received enough so that the women do not have to work constantly with their hands.  At this point all historic precedent would have turned these women into luxury-loving parasites and playthings.  A good many of them have taken this easiest way and entered the peripatetic harems of the rich.  But several million women refused to repeat the old cycle of ruin; they knew too much.[27] What then should they do?  Faith in the value of conventual life for women had passed; industrial changes had transformed their homes so that the endless spinning, weaving, sewing and knitting were no longer there, even to be supervised.  Penelope’s tasks had passed to foremen, working under trades union agreements, in the factories of Fall River and Birmingham.  Even the function of the lady bountiful who looked after the spiritual and family affairs of her tenants and servants and distributed doles and Christmas baskets was gone.  Her tenants owned their own farms, and her chauffeur resented her interference with his personal life.  What should she do?

[27] RHETA CHILDE DORR, What Eight Million Women Want, Boston:  Small, Maynard & Co., 1910.

And this movement was not confined to the rich, for those who were not yet economically free were still deeply influenced by the changes which were taking place.  The Goulds, Stanfords, Vanderbilts, Floods, Carnegies and Schwabs had all been lifted from the level of the masses to financial grandeur before the eyes of the multitude, and democratic ambitions drove parents who thought themselves in the line of financial advancement to secure culture for their girls in time.  If the daughter was destined to live on Fifth Avenue, or to marry a duke, it was best to get her ready while young.  In all our industrial democracies, armies of American parents have devoted themselves to labor, and even sacrificed comforts and necessities, that the daughters might get ready to live easier and fuller lives than the parents had known.  If the choice had to be made between the girl and her brother, the chivalry of the father and the ambition of the mother very often gave the opportunity to the girl.