But even if business and home life could respond to the change without
strain, even if both could easily turn back on the road they have come
during the last hundred years, commerce yielding up and the home
re-adopting certain occupations, we should carefully weigh the economic
value of a reversion to primitive methods.

The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no less
certainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If an
unpaid person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that the
particular effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts to
rout all thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give over
thinking in this loose way. Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not,
must be used wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure of
our civilization.

Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's time
as little as it questions the quality of the home product. Any careful
reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will
note that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly
double the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration
only the question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is
supposed to be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid
toil. Should any housewife conscientiously follow the advice given her
by state and municipal authorities she would be the drudge at the center
of a home quite medieval in development.

Let us take a concrete example:--In a recently published and widely
applauded cookbook put out by a whole committee of Adamistic
philosophers, it is stated that the object of the book is to give