g, a little
ironing going on, and it is all by hand-power, which is the most
expensive power known. It is also being done largely by amateurs, and
that adds to the amount of labor expended. Women have worked away at
these endless tasks for generations, lovingly, unselfishly, doing their
level best to do everything, with no thought of themselves at all.
When things get too many for them, and the burdens overpower them, they
die quietly, and some other woman, young, strong and fresh, takes their
place, and the modest white slab in the graveyard says, "Thy will be
done," and everybody is apparently satisfied. The Lord is blamed for
the whole thing.

Now, if men, with their good organizing ability and their love of
comfort and their sense of their own importance, were set down to do
the work that women have done all down the centuries, they would evolve
a scheme something like this in each of the country neighborhoods.
There would be a central station, municipally owned and operated, one
large building fitted out with machinery that would be run by gasoline,
electricity, or natural gas. This building would contain in addition
to the school-rooms, a laundry room, a bake-shop, a creamery, a
dressmaking establishment, and perhaps a butcher shop.

The consolidated school and the "Beef-rings" in the country district
are already established facts, and have opened the way for this larger
scheme of cooperation. In this manner the work would be done by
experts, and in the cheapest way, leaving the women in the farm homes
with time and strength to raise their children.

This plan would solve the problem, too, of young people leaving the
farm. Many of the young people would find occupation in the central
station and become proficient in some branch of the work carried on
there. They would find not only employment, but the companionship of
people of their own age. The central station would become a social
gathering place in the evenings for all the people of the district, and
it is not too visionary to see in it a lecture hall, a moving-picture
machine, and a music room. Then the young people would be kept on the
farms because their homes would be pleasanter places. No woman can
bake, wash, scrub, cook meals and raise children and still be happy.
To do all these things would make an archangel irritable, and no home
can be happy when the poor mother is too tired to smile! The children
feel an atmosphere of gloom, and natur