, something to be shut in the office,
something which need not be understood or supported at home, and
certainly something over which a wife at home has little influence.
These two points of view are not reconcilable; hence everyone loses who
tries to hold to both at once.

If you say to a business executive, "Business is a thing apart," he will
point out at once that your theory is true only in the least important
jobs. The management does not worry much about the home environment of
the beginner upon whom no real responsibility rests, but it frequently
goes to unbelievable ends to get its more important employees back onto
the track if they have lost their heads over a home problem. Again,
business does this for no humanitarian reasons; it takes this attitude
because its employees produce better where there is harmony at home.

The capable, intelligent, and progressive worker is almost invariably
married to a capable, intelligent, and progressive woman. Each acts and
reacts upon the other. Men are not so versatile that they can fill $5000
jobs during the day and then go home to become husbands of $1500 women
in the evening. Neither are women so versatile that they will remain in
contented harmony with husbands who are not their mental equals. Some
look negatively at the problem, feeling that "I could have done better
if I had had the advantages of so-and-so." The facts are that these
envied couples were growing up together, keeping pace mentally, long
before the promotion came which is given the credit for their present
condition.

When a wife falls down on her part of the job, neglecting either harmony
or her personal development, her husband's first natural reaction is to
separate his business from his home life--to grit his teeth and go on,
hoping to achieve the impossible. This usually sets up a vicious circle
of events. Being handicapped in personal effectiveness, he spends more
and more time at business. His home goes to ruin; he suffers the most
dangerous emotional upsets; his work fails, and conditions get worse and
worse. He breaks, in short, at the wrong time--a time inconvenient to
business, to put it brutally.

It is dangerous to generalize here, because there is a fine distinction
between harmony at home and bringing business into the home. Hasty
thinking is likely to confuse the two. The man who takes petty troubles
of the routine day home to his wife is a weakling, and business cannot
consider him f