self-respect as to idle about our streets and drawing-rooms because
their fathers are rich enough to support them. We are not without
our unemployed poor; but roving tramps and idle clubmen are after
all not of large consequence. Our serious, non-producing classes
are chiefly women. It is the regular ambition of the chivalrous
American to make all the women who depend on him so comfortable
that they need do nothing for themselves. Machinery has taken
nearly all the former occupations of women out of the home into
the shop and factory. Widespread wealth and comfort, and the
inherited theory that it is not well for the woman to earn money
so long as father or brothers can support her, have brought about
a condition of things in which there is social danger, unless with
the larger leisure are given high and enduring interests. To health
especially there is great danger, for nothing breaks down a woman's
health like idleness and its resulting ennui. More people, I am
sure, are broken down nervously because they are bored, than
because they are overworked; and more still go to pieces through
fussiness, unwholesome living, worry over petty details, and the
daily disappointments which result from small and superficial
training. And then, besides the danger to health, there is the
danger to character. I need not dwell on the undermining influence
which men also feel when occupation is taken away and no absorbing
private interest fills the vacancy. The vices of luxurious city
life are perhaps hardly more destructive to character than is the
slow deterioration of barren country life. Though the conditions
in the two cases are exactly opposite, the trouble is often the
same,--absence of noble interests. In the city restless idleness
organizes amusement; in the country deadly dulness succeeds
daily toil.