to bread is absurd. The theory that she does something more
difficult and less interesting is equally absurd.

The practice of handing over the pay envelope at the end of the week
to the woman, so common among laboring people, is a recognition of her
equal economic function. It is a recognition that the venture of the
two is common and that its success depends as much on the care and
intelligence with which she spends the money as it does on the energy
and steadiness with which he earns it. Whenever one or the other
fails, trouble begins. The failure to understand this business side of
the marriage relation almost inevitably produces humiliation and
irritation. So serious has the strain become because of this false
start that various devices have been suggested to repair it--Mr.
Wells' "Paid Motherhood" is one; weekly wages as for a servant is
another. Both notions encourage the primary mistake that the woman has
not an equal economic place with the man in the marriage.

Marriage is a business as well as a sentimental partnership. But a
business partnership brings grave practical responsibilities, and
this, under our present system, the girl is rarely trained to face.
She becomes a partner in an undertaking where her function is
spending. The probability is she does not know a credit from a debit,
has to learn to make out a check correctly, and has no conscience
about the fundamental matter of living within the allowance which can
be set aside for the family expenses. When this is true of her, she at
once puts herself into the rank of an incompetent--she becomes an
economic dependent. She has laid the foundation for becoming an Uneasy
Woman.

It is common enough to hear women arguing that this close grappling
with household economy is narrowing, not worthy of them. Why keeping
track of the cost of eggs and butter and calculating how much your
income will allow you to buy is any more narrowing than keeping track
of the cost and quality of cotton or wool or iron and calculating how
much a mill requires, it is hard to see. It is the same kind of a
problem. Moreover, it has the added interest of being always an
independent _personal_ problem. Most men work under the deadening
effect of impersonal routine. They do that which others have planned
and for results in which they have no permanent share.

But the woman argues that her task has no relation to the state. Her
failure to see that relation costs this country heavil