are out of repair, or
the cemetery is neglected, or the school building insanitary. Perhaps
the water supply is not properly guarded, or milk inspection not
thoroughly looked after. Perhaps industrial conditions in the town are
not what they should be. Perhaps laws are not being enforced. New
conditions require new laws. There may be loafing places on streets
and in stores which are dangerous. The billiard halls may need a
thorough moral cleaning and a moral man placed in charge. The public
dance halls may need proper chaperonage. The moving pictures need
state and national censorship to eliminate the careless suggestions
leading toward both vice and crime. The homemaker must know under such
circumstances how to stir public opinion, how to make use of her
existing organizations, how to set on foot the various movements
necessary for reform.

In connection with the subject of the homemaker's place in the
community we must return to the thought of woman as the buyer for the
home and of her consequent influence upon the economic standards of
the community. It is not unusual in these days to read or hear such
statements as the following: "The woman was no longer producer and
consumer.... She became the consumer and her entire economic function
changed.... The housewife is the buying agent for the home." Like many
statements in regard to woman and her function, this seems overdrawn,
since woman in her capacity as homemaker is still a producer as well
as a consumer in thousands of cases. That she will become,
economically, _merely_ a buying agent, some of us not only doubt, but
should consider a certain misfortune, should it occur. The fact
remains, however, that as buyer of both raw materials and finished
products the woman spends a very large percentage (some say
nine-tenths) of the money taken in by the retail merchants of the
country. This gives, or should give her, a commanding position in the
producing world. If the women of America should definitely decide
to-day that they would buy no more corn flakes, or mercerized crochet
cotton, or silk elastic, the factories now so busy turning out these
products would be shut down to-morrow until they could be converted to
other uses. Women often fail to realize their power in this
direction. When they do realize it, they are able to accomplish
quietly all sorts of reforms in the mercantile and industrial worlds.
There need be no crusade against adulterated foods other than real