that she let the manufacturing of these commodities go into the hands of
men, as soon as organization and a larger conception of their production
were required. She felt no responsibility for their management when they
were taken from the home to the factory, for deeper than her instinct to
manufacture food and clothing for her family was her instinct to stay
with them, and by isolation and care to guard them from evil.

She had become convinced that a woman's duty extended only to her own
family, and that the world outside had no claim upon her. The British
matron ordered her maidens aright, when they were spinning under her own
roof, but she felt no compunction of conscience when the morals and
health of young girls were endangered in the overcrowded and insanitary
factories. The code of family ethics was established in her mind so
firmly that it excluded any notion of social effort.

It is quite possible to accept this explanation of the origin of morals,
and to believe that the preservation of the home is at the foundation of
all that is best in civilization, without at the same time insisting
that the separate preparation and serving of food is an inherent part of
the structure and sanctity of the home, or that those who minister to
one household shall minister to that exclusively. But to make this
distinction seems difficult, and almost invariably the sense of
obligation to the family becomes confused with a certain sort of
domestic management. The moral issue involved in one has become
inextricably combined with the industrial difficulty involved in the
other, and it is at this point that so many perplexed housekeepers,
through the confusion of the two problems, take a difficult and
untenable position.

There are economic as well as ethical reasons for this survival of a