Employees leaving the Elgin Watch Company factory. Thousands of women
are away from their homes through long days of toil]

The girl, educated to earn her living in the market of the world, no
longer marries simply because no other career is open to her; when
she does marry, she is less likely than formerly, statistics tell us,
to have children--the only remaining work which, in these days,
definitely requires a home. Marriage and homemaking, therefore, are no
longer inseparably connected in the woman's mind. Girls are willing to
undertake matrimony, but often with the distinct understanding that
their "careers" are not to be interfered with. To them, then, marriage
becomes more and more an incident in life rather than a life work.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A typical tenement house. Congestion means discomfort within the home
and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or
social needs]

A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great
increase of city homes. Urban conditions are almost without exception
detrimental to home life. Congestion means discomfort within the home
and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or
social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for
satisfying these needs outside the home. Family life under such
conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of
solidarity which makes the dwelling place a home. No longer the place
where work is done, no longer the place where common interests are
shared, the home becomes only "the place where I eat and sleep," or
perhaps merely "where I sleep." The great increase of urban life
during the last half century is thus a very real menace, and, since