Now all has changed. The home, by consenting to use factory products and by employing outside help, has involved itself in the great labor problem; by educating its daughters to support themselves in occupations unconnected with its management it has complicated its original problem of household administration; by entrusting the education of its little children to schools, the care of its sick to hospitals, the protection of its water supply, and other important interests, to town councils or to village boards, it has entered into public affairs. It has brought to itself new problems and to women and to men new responsibilities, new opportunities, and new privileges. These new responsibilities, opportunities, and privileges will be considered in the pages that follow.
CONTENTS
HOME PROBLEMS FROM A
NEW STANDPOINT
MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN
MORE life for woman—not only in length through increase of years, but also in breadth through increase in joyful, satisfactory, well-directed activity.
A person is prompted to activity by certain instincts or desires. It is common to divide these desires into two classes—the self-regarding and the other-regarding. Among those of the first class are the desires for nutrition, for parenthood, for intellectual activity, and for creating objects of utility and beauty. Among those of the second class are love and sympathy. It is common, also, to divide the activities prompted by the desires into selfish and unselfish on the ground that some are of value to him alone who engages in them, and some are of value to others only. The latter division, however, is not rational, for it is easy to show of any act, that if it is of benefit to the doer it must be to others also, and vice versa. Eating, for example, is prompted by a desire that is entirely self-regarding, but if we did not eat we could not work for others.
Although there is no reason for a classification of activities based upon the recipient of the benefit, there is a reason for a division based upon the way in which the advantage comes to the doer or to others. The self-regarding instincts inspire one to acts which lead directly to the enrichment of his own life and only indirectly, and by way of his increased power through activity and consequent increased capacity for service, to the welfare of others. By such acts he preserves his life, promotes his health, acquires knowledge, and cultivates talents in whose expression he finds pleasure. The other-regarding instincts lead one to activities which tend directly to the welfare of others, and only by a circuitous route and by way of the benefit conferred upon others, to the enrichment of his own life. By such activities he sacrifices or endangers his life that others may live, he gives up health for the health of others, imparts knowledge at the expense of limiting his own store of information, and leads others to the satisfaction of expressing their talents by sacrificing the cultivation and exercise of his peculiar gifts.
Success in either form of activity is dependent upon activity of the other kind. The man who teaches successfully finds that he at the same time systematizes his own knowledge, makes it available for his own purposes, and prepares himself for further learning. The woman who would have strong children seeks to increase her own physical vigor, and thus by work for others she secures the joys of health for herself.
On the other hand, activity of one kind, at the expense of the other, tends not only to unbalance, but to narrow life. The mother who blindly performs unnecessary services for her child, and thus curtails her time for reading and study, runs the risk of becoming incapable of directing wisely the education of the child in later life. She not only unbalances her life by too much serving, but also narrows it by reducing her chances for continued usefulness.