It may be that it calls for the vote. I do
not myself see this, but it is certain that she will have the vote as
soon as not a majority, but an approximate half, not of men--but of
women--feel the need of it.

What she has partially at least lost sight of is that education,
freedom, organization, agitation, the suffrage, are but tools to an
end. What she now needs is to formulate that end so nobly and clearly
that the most ignorant woman may understand it. The failure to do
this is leading her deeper and deeper into fruitless unrest. It is
also dulling her sense of the necessity of keeping her business
abreast with the times. At one particular and vital point this shows
painfully, and that is her slowness in socializing her home.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE HOME

It is only by much junketing about that one comes to the full
realization of what men and women in the main are doing in this
country. One learns as he passes from town to town, through cities and
across plains, that the general reason for industry everywhere is to
get the means to build and support a home. Row upon row, street upon
street, they run in every village you traverse. They dot the hills and
valleys, they break up the mountain side.

Every night they draw to their shelter millions of men who have toiled
since morning to earn the money to build and keep them running. All
day they shelter millions of women who toil from dawn to dark to put
meaning into them. To shelter two people and the children that come to
them, to provide them a place in which to eat and sleep, is that the
only function of these homes? If that were all, few homes would be
built. When that becomes all, the home is no more! To furnish a body
for a soul, that is the physical function of the home.

There are certain people who cry out that for a woman this undertaking
has no meaning--that for her it is a cook stove and a dustpan, a
childbed, and a man who regards her as his servant. One might with
equal justice say that for the man it is made up of ten, twelve, or
more hours, at the plow, the engine, the counter, or the pen for the
sake of supporting a woman and children whom he rarely sees!
Unhappily, there are such combinations; they are not homes! They are
deplorable failures of people who have tried to make homes. To insist
that they are anything else is to overlook the facts of life, to doubt
the sanity of mankind which hopefully and courageously goes on