Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/298

294

As long, then, as there is a demand for the influences of home life, the home in some form will continue, for we have not yet outlived the beneficent influences of home life, even though we have outlived some of its former customs.

The subject of divorce is one which much concerns the sociologists and theologians to-day because of its demoralizing influence on the development of efficient personality in the family.

Satisfies tell us that during the period from 1900-1905, while the population increased 8.7 per cent., divorces increased 22.1 per cent.

It is not the purpose of this paper to enter upon a discussion of divorce except in so far as it is affected by woman's specialized industry in the home of food preparation and resulting necessities. Statistics are wanting on the subject, because as yet the sociologist has not known how to collect them, but a careful observation extending over fifteen years has led to the conclusion that many of our archaic home conditions are prolific causes of discontent and incompatibility. For one thing a woman who must work sixteen hours a day at unspecialized industry with the attendant fatigue, is unable to compete in charm oftentimes with the leisure parasitic class whose lives are devoted to pleasing men. Such overworked women are too tired to be interested in men's affairs or themselves interesting. Oftentimes because of this lack of leisure the discordant note is struck which later grows into utter lack of harmony.

Sometimes too the duties of married life are so taxing in the early years when the children are small that women, because of their excess of physical work, begin to feel a mental deterioration, and this consciousness of a lack of growth or of cumulative happiness often is the pathway leading to the divorce court. On the other hand, if a woman by means of any previous training is enabled to keep in touch with the mental life of her family as well as the physical life, she has in her work of motherhood found the one thing in life worth while, and in her work then she can feel a sense of satisfaction in her own growth and activity or "cumulative happiness," for she has found her share of the world's work. All the learning she can acquire will be none too