patiently to the homemaker's troubles, and should
strive to see the world from her point of view, but at the same time we
should help her to take a cheerful and courageous tone. One unfailing
help, when our poor friends dwell too much upon their own troubles, is
to tell them ours. Here, too, indirect suggestion is powerful. The
wife, in her attitude toward husband and children, will unconsciously
imitate our own attitude {72} toward them. As Miss Jane Addams says,
if the visitor kisses the baby and makes much of it, the mother will do
the same. A Baltimore visitor has cured one tired woman of scolding
her husband in season and out of season by diverting her attention to
other things, and by seeking her cooperation in plans for improving the
man's habits.

A New York visitor tells of a woman living in a two-room tenement who
is regarded as a marvel by her husband's friends because she makes a
point of having a specially good meal one night in the week, and it is
understood that her husband can bring his friends home to supper on
that night without giving her warning. The home is very humble, but
she has learned the wisdom of making it a real home for her husband,
and one that he can be proud of.

So far, I have ignored the fact that, in the poor home, the woman is
often the breadwinner as well as the homemaker. I wish it were
possible to ignore the further fact that charitable visitors, finding
it difficult to get work for the man or finding him disinclined {73} to
take it, will bestir themselves to get work for the woman instead. One
of the few rules which it is safe to follow blindly is the rule that we
should not encourage any woman to become the breadwinner who has an
able-bodied, unemployed man in the house. "Only harm can result," says
Mrs. Lowell, "if efforts are made to induce the woman to leave her home
daily for work."

Where the breadwinner is disabled, or the woman is a deserted wife or
widow, work is, of course, necessary. We must distinguish, however,
between the deserted wife and the wife whose husband chronically
deserts her, until her condition attracts the charitable help that he
returns to share. Widows with children belong to a class with which
charity has dealt too harshly in the past. When the woman is incapable
of supporting all her children, and this is usually the case, charity
has either allowed her family to depend upon insufficient doles and so
drift into beggary, or else has p