be considered in the light of isolated surface
outbreaks. It is rather the result of deep industrial and social
undercurrents which are stirring the whole world.

In our study of the modern woman movement, which as teachers in any
department of educational work we are bound to make, the fact is
immediately impressed upon us that home life has undergone marked
changes. Conditions once favorable to the existence of the home as a
sustaining economic unit are no longer to be found. New conditions
have arisen, compelling the home, like other permanent institutions,
to alter its mode of existence in order to meet them.

Briefly reviewing the causes which have brought about these changes in
home life, we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number
of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other
quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook,
housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse,
and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the
field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up
naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the
maintenance of the home, and for which, in part, the home existed. The
home, in those days, was the place where work was done.

With the invention of labor-saving machinery came an entire revolution
in the place and manner of work. The father of the family has been
forced by this industrial change to follow his trade from the home
workshop to the mechanically equipped factory. One by one, many of the
housewife's tasks also have been taken from the home. To-day the
processes of cloth making are practically unknown outside the factory.
Knitting has become largely a machine industry. Ready-made clothing
has largely reduced the sewing done in the home. In the matter of
food, the housekeeper may, if she chooses, have a large part of her
work performed by the baker, the canner, and the delicatessen
shopkeeper. Even the care of her children, after the years of infancy,
has been partly assumed by the state.

The home, as a place where work is done, has lost a large part of its
excuse for being. Among the poorer classes, women, like their
husbands, being obliged to earn, and no longer able to do so in their
homes, have followed the work to the factory. As a result we have
many thousands of them away from their homes through long days of
toil. Among persons of larger income, removal of