Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/21

 Rh termine the social relations, we may now trace woman's position in existing society. What remains of the economic foundation of the middle-age home? We may well say, absolutely nothing! All the good old womanly occupations are to-day industrial pursuits. The economic foundation of the woman at home has for a second time been entirely knocked from under her. This time it is the factory with its machine production that has made home labor unprofitable. Woman has no post in the home unless she remains there merely as mother or as housekeeper on a small scale for the man who is lucky enough to afford the luxury. But the very restlessness of the women demonstrates the instability of their position. They get "lonesome," a disease unknown among our busy grandmothers. The upper class woman drowns her lonesomeness by delving headlong into society. "Society" is another name for balls and suppers and dissipations and high living and strong drinks and exciting gambling and genteel cigarette smoking. The middle class woman tries to dispel her lonesomeness at the "club." The working woman's restlessness turns to finding work. Even when not actually driven thereto by necessity her mind turns towards work. The work in the little home is insufficient and non-productive. It does not give satisfaction. Daughters, sisters, and often wives desirous of having the family "get on" better go to the factory, store or office to seek work. To learn a trade and find an occupation is nowadays as much the thought of the girls as of the boys. Marriage is not the rule nor is it the haven to which woman looks for her support. It is incidental. The work is the rule and the means whereby she feels surest to be able to live. It is time enough to learn housekeeping when a girl is married. There is not much to learn anyhow in these days of canned goods and bakers' kitchens. For that matter, it is found to be about as cheap not to keep house.

With this change in the economic relations came inevitably the corresponding changes in social relations, in manners, customs and ideas. Not only has the upper class woman broken loose in "society," not only has the middle class woman