Again, they offer little prospect of advance, for they lead nowhere.
Further, as noted in an earlier chapter in the census reports all
women returning themselves as engaged in domestic duties (not being
paid employes), were necessarily not listed as gainfully employed. Yet
it is impossible to believe that compared with other ways of employing
time and energy, the hours that women spend in cooking and cleaning
for the family, even if on unavoidably primitive lines, have no value
to the community. Or again, that the hours a mother spends in caring
for her baby, later on in helping with the lessons, and fitting the
children for manhood or womanhood, have no value in the nation's
account book. I will be reminded that this is an unworthy way of
reckoning up the inestimable labors of the wife and mother. Perhaps
so. Yet personally, I should much prefer a system of social economics
which could estimate the items at a fair, not excessive value, and
credit them to the proper quarter.
A well-known woman publicist recently drew attention to the vast
number of the women engaged in domestic life, and expressed regret
that organizations like the National Women's Trade Union League
confined their attention so exclusively to the women and girls
employed in factories and stores, who, even today, fall so far short
numerically of their sisters who are working in the home or on
the farm.
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