factory and the counting room, to law or to medicine is the great gateway to the future where dreams shall come true. For the women who have passed through, have arrived at last at the great goal, economic independence.
Now what that means the sociologists could tell. Though they might not think to put it in terms of, for instance, Elsa von Stuttgart's slippers. They would, I suppose, agree that economic independence is the right to earn one's living—and be paid for it like a man. One earned it yesterday if one washed the dishes and cooked the meals and reared the children and kept the house for the other person who held the purse. Housekeepers of this class have been the busiest people we have had about us. And yet the census offices administered by men had so little idea of these women's economic value, that they have been actually listed in government statistical returns as "unoccupied." So also of course were the other housekeepers who, eliminating some of these most arduous tasks from the long day, nevertheless were not at least idle when they bore a man's children and presided at his dinner table and entertained his friends and practised generally the graceful art of making a home. When they undertook these duties, there was a church promise, With all my worldly goods, I thee endow. That figure of speech, the law courts reduce to "maintenance," that is to say, board and clothes. But, so widely disseminated has been the idea that the lady is "unoccupied" that these are generally regarded
