Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/120

 why not? But why should the other women not also have what they want, and do what they can? No one, looking round the world of men and women, can honestly say that men do as a matter of fact choose their wives from the girls who love baby-minding, cooking and cleaning beyond all things. Young men are not thinking about such things at all when courting, and they go for nothing in the sex-attraction a girl possesses. We women, if we have lived a good while, have all known scores of girls left unwed who would have made better mothers and better housekeepers than those who have married, and in some cases "could have married a dozen times" as the saying goes. The fact is that the perfect wife, mother, nurse, teacher and housekeeper is very rarely one person.

Girls are less domesticated now, largely because the development of industry has made them less so. Bread, jams, pickles, candles, hams, yarn, cloth and clothes that used to be made in the home are now made in the factory. It seems to me perfectly clear that by degrees much of the cooking and laundering, even of the poor, will be done on a large scale by those who receive wages for doing it. The discomfort and unhealthiness of laundry work in a small cottage, and the waste of time and fuel in cookery, are manifest to everyone who has ever seen them. There will be a development of the creche or day nursery in all towns, and eventually those who love the individualist life will rind it best in country districts, while the towns will be given over to the