The new plan seems expensive?  “Twelve dollars a week is more than I have paid my domestic helper,” Mrs. Reader says.  But consider this more carefully.  You pay from thirty-five to fifty dollars a month with all the worker’s food and lodging provided.  This is at the rate of eight to eleven dollars a week for wages.  Food and room cost at least five dollars a week, and most estimates are higher.  The old type of houseworker has cost us more than we have realized.  The new system compares favorably in expense with the old.

“I am perfectly certain it wouldn’t be practical not to feed my helper,” Mrs. Reader says.  Under the old system of a twelve to fourteen-hour working day, it would not be feasible, but if she is on the eight-hour basis, the worker can bring a box-luncheon with her, or she can go outside to a restaurant just as she would if she were in an office or factory.  The time spent in eating is not included in her day’s work.  Think of the relief to the house-keeper who can order what her family likes to eat without having to say, “Oh, I can’t have that; Mary wouldn’t eat it you know.”

“I can’t afford a Home Assistant or a maid at the present wages,” some one says.  “But I do wish I had some one who could get and serve dinner every night.  I am so tired by evening that cooking is the last straw.”

Try looking for a Home Assistant for four hours a day to relieve you of just this work.  You would have to pay about a dollar a day or six dollars a week for such service and it would be worth it.

How does the Home Assistant plan work in households where two or more helpers are kept?  The more complicated homes run several shifts of workers, coming in at different hours and covering every need of the day.  One woman I talked to told me that she studied out her problem in this way!  She did every bit of the work in her house for a while in order to find out how long each job took.  She found, for instance, that it took twenty-five minutes to clean one bathroom, ten minutes to brush down and dust a flight of stairs, thirty minutes to do the dinner dishes, and so on through all the work.  She made out a time-card which showed that twenty-two hours of work a day was needed for her home.  She knew how much money she could spend and she proceeded to divide the work and money among several assistants coming in on different shifts.  Her household now runs like clockwork.  One of the splendid things about this new system is its great flexibility and the fact that it can be adapted to any household.

Thoughtful and intelligent planning such as this woman gave to her problems is necessary for the greatest success of the plan.  The old haphazard methods must go.  The housekeeper who has been in the habit of coming into her kitchen about half past five and saying, “Oh, Mary, what can we have for dinner?  I have just come back from down-town; I did expect to be home sooner,” will not get the most out