connected with the servant problem. The work in the most modern apartments
does not require the soiling of the hands in a serious way. With hard wood
floors, bright gas-stoves, porcelain lined dishes, no pots and kettles,
all the stairs, halls, etc., cared for by the janitor, the work is of a
far less smutting kind than in the suburban house, where there is still
need for much cleaning up of a roughening sort which cannot be escaped.
This has more to do than we are apt to think with the distaste for the
country, unless several servants are kept, some for this work only. In the
old type of city house the travel up-and down-stairs to answer bell and
telephone has demanded strength of back not possessed by the modern maid.
The house is not yet adapted to the new demands of the workers, and they
shun it. The mistress herself finds it beyond her strength, even if the
traces of rough work were not quite so distasteful to her.

Miss Pettengill in her story of domestic service brings out the great part
played by sooty dust, sifting in even through closed windows, in the
burden of the waitress who is expected to keep the dining-room immaculate.

This is only one instance where the blame really belongs on the actual
material house rather than on the mistress, except that she does not
discover a remedy, does not even know where to look for the cause. I have
great faith in the business woman, who does see much that is better done
and who will bring it back into the home.

Fashions in philanthropy do not yet tend in the direction of house
betterment.

"A busy man cannot stop his life-work to teach architects what they ought
to know," says Wells; but on the other hand "we cannot be expected to
teach men and their wives, as well as draw plans for them," says the