its social aspect. Possibly no relation has been so slow to respond to
the social ethics which we are now considering, as that between the
household employer and the household employee, or, as it is still
sometimes called, that between mistress and servant.

This persistence of the individual code in relation to the household may
be partly accounted for by the fact that orderly life and, in a sense,
civilization itself, grew from the concentration of interest in one
place, and that moral feeling first became centred in a limited number
of persons. From the familiar proposition that the home began because
the mother was obliged to stay in one spot in order to cherish the
child, we can see a foundation for the belief that if women are much
away from home, the home itself will be destroyed and all ethical
progress endangered.

We have further been told that the earliest dances and social gatherings
were most questionable in their purposes, and that it was, therefore,
the good and virtuous women who first stayed at home, until gradually
the two--the woman who stayed at home and the woman who guarded her
virtue--became synonymous. A code of ethics was thus developed in regard
to woman's conduct, and her duties were logically and carefully limited
to her own family circle. When it became impossible to adequately
minister to the needs of this circle without the help of many people who
did not strictly belong to the family, although they were part of the
household, they were added as aids merely for supplying these needs.
When women were the brewers and bakers, the fullers, dyers, spinners,
and weavers, the soap and candle makers, they administered large
industries, but solely from the family point of view. Only a few hundred
years ago, woman had complete control of the manufacturing of many
commodities which now figure so largely in commerce, and it is evident