d, or is indolent and given to the rocking-chair and a
novel-a-day, makes the beds without a wrinkle. He may lack ambition
and initiative, the necessary amount of brains to carry him to success
in any of the old masculine jobs, but he inherits the thoroughness of
the ages that have trained him, and, if sober, rides the heavy waves
of his job like a cork. I will venture to say that a man thus employed
would finish his work before eight P.M. and spend an hour or two
before bed-time with his girl or at his club.

Many a Jap in California does the amount of work I have described, and
absorbs knowledge in and out of books during his hours of leisure.
Sometimes they do more than I have indicated as possible for the white
man. Energetic boys, who want to return to Japan as soon as possible,
or, mayhap, buy a farm, make a hundred dollars a month by getting up
at five in the morning to wash a certain number of stoops and sweep
sidewalks, cook a breakfast and wash up the dinner dishes in one
servantless household, the lunch dishes in another, clean up generally
in another, cook the dinner, wait on the table, clean up in still
another. As white men are stronger they could do even more, and
support a wife in an intensive little flat where her work would be
both light and spiritually remunerative. Domestic service would solve
the terrible problem of life for thousands of men, and it would
coincidentally release thousands of girls from the factory, the
counter, and the exhausting misery of a "home" that never can be their
own. At night he could feel like a householder and that he lived to
some purpose. If he is inclined to complain that such a life is not
"manly," let him reflect that as he is not first-rate anyhow, and
never can compete with the fully equipped, he had best be
philosophical and get what comfort out of life he can. Certainly the
increased economic value of thousands of men, at present slaving as
underpaid clerks and living in hall bedrooms, would thin the ranks of
the most ancient of all industries, if, according to our ardent
reformers, they are recruited from the ranks of the lonely
servant-girl, the tired shop-girl, and the despairing factory hand.

III

For it is largely a question of muscle and biology.

I have stated elsewhere that I believe in equal suffrage, if only
because women are the mothers of men and therefore their equals. But I
think there are several times more reasons why American women at le