men. They are the most demanding portion of our society. They spend
more money than any other group, are more insistent in their cry for
amusement, are more resentful of interruptions of their pleasures and
excitements; they go to greater extremes of indolence and of
uneasiness.

The really serious side to the existence of this parasitical group is
that great numbers of other women, not free, forced to produce, accept
their standards of life. We hear women, useful women, everywhere
talking about the desirability of not being obliged to do anything,
commiserating women who must work, commiserating those who have heavy
household responsibilities, and by the whole gist of their words and
acts influencing those younger and less experienced than themselves to
believe that happiness lies in irresponsible living.

Various gradations of the theory of which this is the extreme
expression show themselves. Thus there are great numbers of women of
moderate means, who by a little daily effort can keep comfortable and
attractive homes for themselves and their husbands, and yet who are
utterly regardless of outside responsibilities, who are practically
isolated in the community. They pass their lives in a little round of
household activities, sunning and preening themselves in their long
hours of leisure like so many sleek cats.

There is still another division of this irresponsible class, who build
up frenzied existences for themselves in all sorts of outside
activities. They plunge headlong into each new proposition for
pleasure or social service only to desert it as something more novel
and exciting and, for the instant, popular, appears. Steady,
intelligent standing by an undertaking through its ups and downs, its
dull seasons and its unpopular phases, they are incapable of. Their
efforts have no relation to an intelligently conceived purpose. With
them may be grouped those women who, by their canonization of the
unimportant, construct heavily burdened but utterly fruitless lives.
They laboriously pad out their days with trivial things, vanities,
shams, and shadows, to which they give the serious undivided attention
which should be bestowed only on real enterprises.

There are others who seek soporifics, release from a hearty tackling
of their individual situations, in absorbing work, a work which
perhaps fills their minds, but which is mere occupation--something to
make them forget--not an art for art's sake, not labor for it