Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - Women of the Future - 1916.pdf/20

 home as a workshop. The only family that Socialism will break up is the family founded on the economic dependence of women, Nor will this breaking-up process be achieved by Socialism alone. Capitalism began it more than a century ago, and is continuing it at the present time in an unbroken process of evolution. When the first machinery for spinning and weaving went into operation, when the first domestic industries were transferred from the home to the factory, capitalism began to break up the home as a workshop, the traditional home of countless generations. When the first women spinners and weavers left their unpaid domestic labor and entered the factories as wage workers, capitalism began to destroy the family, the traditional family supported and controlled by its male head. But the transformation brought about by capitalism is still incomplete. Although most industries have been taken out of the home, some remnants of domestic industry still linger that necessitate the continuous presence of women working in a primitive way. Although women have been given the opportunity to become economically independent, this independence is still supposed to terminate with marriage, the economic status of wives is still supposed to be one of dependence upon their husbands. Socialism will merely lead the present trend of development to its rational and inevitable conclusion by taking the last domestic industries out of the home and socializing them like all others, and by giving all women economic independence, regardless of their marital relation. Let us first consider the home as it is likely to be under Socialism.

The reader will admit that a home does not become less pleasant and desirable because no industrial occupation is performed within its walls. Surely the home that is only a place for peace and comfort is more attractive to the tired man or woman after the day's work is done, than the home that is also a workshop. If spinning and weaving, tailoring and dressmaking, pickling and