Women's housekeeping, or most of it, has gradually been withdrawn from
the home and transferred to the municipality. There was a time when
women could ensure their families pure food, good milk, clean ice,
proper sanitation. They cannot do that now. The City Hall governs all
such matters. Again the men find themselves facing the old dilemma. They
must either support their women in idleness--do all their own as well as
the women's housekeeping--or they must allow their women to leave the
home and follow their housekeeping to the place where it is now being
done,--the polls.

Women are beginning to understand the situation. They are even beginning
to understand how badly the men are providing for the municipal family.
They are demanding their old housekeeping tasks back again. To this
point has the Suffrage movement, begun in 1848 by a band of women called
fanatics, arrived.





CHAPTER XI

IN CONCLUSION


I have tried to set down in these pages the collective opinion of women,
as far as it has expressed itself through deeds. I have not succeeded if
any reader lays down the book with the impression that he has merely
been reading the story of the American club woman. I have not succeeded
at all if my readers imagine that I have been writing only about a