This open door of senseless extravagance hinges directly upon the idle wife. She leaves her position of domestic service, not to take a higher one in world service; but to depute her own work to an inferior and do none at all.

Thus we find that in the grade of household labour done by the housewife we have all those elements of incapacity and waste before explained; and that in the grade done by the housemaid we have a decrease in ability, a measurable increase in direct waste, and an immeasurable increase in the constantly rising sum of waste due to these bloated buildings stuffed with a thousand superfluities wherein the priceless energies of women are poured out in endless foolishness; in work that meets no real need; and in play that neither rests nor refreshes.

So far our sufferings under the present rapid elimination of the housemaid have taught us little. Our principal idea of bettering the condition is by training servants. We seriously propose to establish schools to train these reluctant young women to our service; even in some cases to pay them for going there. This is indeed necessary; for why should they pay for tuition, or even waste time in gratuitously studying, when they can get wages without?

We do not, and cannot, offer such graded and progressive salaries as shall tempt really high-class labour into this field. Skilled labour and domestic service are incompatible. The degree of intelligence, talent, learning, and trained skill which should be devoted to feeding and cleaning the human race will never consent to domestic service. It is the grade of work which forever limits its development, the place, the form of service. So long as the home is the workshop the housewife cannot, and the housemaid will not, even if she could, properly do this work for the neglected world.

Is it not time that the home be freed from these industries so palpably out of place? That the expense of living be decreased by two-thirds and the productive labour increased by nine-twentieths? That our women cease to be an almost universal class of house-servants; plus a small class of parasitic idlers and greedy consumers of wealth? That the preparation of food be raised from its present condition of inadequacy, injury, and waste to such a professional and scientific position that we may learn to spare from our street corners both the drug-store and the saloon? That the care of children become at last what it should be—the noblest and most valuable profession, to the endless profit of our little ones and progress of the race? And that our homes, no longer greasy, dusty workshops, but centres of rest and peace; no longer gorgeous places of entertainment that does not entertain, but quiet places of happiness; no longer costing the laborious lives of overworked women or supporting the useless lives of idle ones, but properly maintained by organised industries; become enjoyed by men and women alike, both glad and honourable workers in an easy world?

[3] ] See Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class."

[4] ] See Veblen again.

VII
HOME-COOKING

We are all reared in a traditional belief that what we get to eat at home is, by virtue of that location, better than what we get to eat anywhere else. The expression, "home-cooking," carries a connotation of assured excellence, and the popular eating-house advertises "pies like those your mother used to make," as if pie-making were a maternal function. Economy, comfort, and health are supposed to accompany our domestic food supply, and danger to follow the footsteps of those who eat in a hotel, a restaurant, or a boarding house. Is this long-accepted theory correct? Is the home, as the last stage of our elaborate processes of social nutrition, a success?

"Home-cooking" is an alluring phrase, but lay aside the allurement; the term applies to Eskimo hut, to Choctaw wigwam, to Turk and Chinaman and Russian Jew—whose home-cooking are we praising? Our own, of course. Which means nothing—absolutely nothing—but that the stomach adapts itself to what it has to live on—unless it is too poisonous. Of course we like what we are used to; be it sauerkraut or saleratus biscuit. We like tobacco too, and alcohol, and chloral and morphine.