This conception is well illustrated by the case of a woman in western New York, who married about 1850, and went to live on a farm with her husband.  They had small means, but she brought seven hundred dollars to the altar, which was more than he possessed in ready capital.  Her part was, however, soon swallowed up in the general business, and while there was a tacit agreement, voiced at long intervals, that she had put something into the business, her part never increased, though the man with whom she worked grew well-to-do.  Certain feudal rights in the butter the woman made and in the chickens she raised, yielded her small sums, which often escaped her, but which she sometimes secured and put into a few silver spoons and dishes for her table, a square of Brussels carpet, three lace curtains, a marble topped stand, and six horsehair covered chairs for her parlor.  These articles were considered in a very special sense her own.  The man might have sold them and used the money, but public opinion would have condemned him had he done so.

Meantime the woman cooked for the family and the hired men, scrubbed and washed and mended.  She strained and skimmed the milk from a dozen cows, and churned the butter; she fed the calves; cared for the hens; dug in the garden; gathered the vegetables; did the family sewing; and stole fragments of time for her flower-beds.  Her hours were from five in the morning until nine at night, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, with no half-days or Sundays off.

Incidentally she read her Bible, maintained religious exercises in the village, provided the church with a carpet by methods of indirection and kept the church clean.  She upheld a moral standard toward which men only weakly struggled; hunted down and drove away all other women who refused equal service to their lords; ministered to the neighboring sick; and doled out alms in winter-time.  Her home was a social and industrial microcosm which she conducted as a feudal holding under the protection of her lord.  It would be an interesting study to work out the rules of this feudal relation between husband and wife in any agricultural community.  They would be found as varied, as unjust and arbitrary, and as generous, as those of the old regime in France.

A woman in a home is supposed to furnish three kinds of service.  She must be a housekeeper, a wife and a mother.  As housekeeper, her services can be estimated in current values running from three to twenty-five dollars a week with board and lodging.  The other two kinds of service have never been reduced to monetary values.

As a wife, a woman is supposed to give her love, her person, her sympathy and inspiration; the personal care of a husband, including his clothes, attention to his relations and friends and general management of his social position and reputation.  If she fills this position well, she is mistress, valet, confidential adviser and public entertainer.  Possibly these services can be rated except the first, and even here the divorce courts scale alienated affections all the way from five hundred to twenty-five thousand dollars, according to the appearance of the woman and the skill of contending lawyers.