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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

way to overcome all this friction. The same science and thought must be brought to bear upon this peculiar problem that is brought to bear upon other problems.

Women are in need of training; they have been drudges and slaves from time immemorial, but they have never been laborers, skilled and respected as men; that time is only at hand. Women will find, as men have, that the very best way to get work out of the way is to do it in the very best way, and before we know it, the very doing of it in the best spirit, we have grown in wisdom and in stature. We have become educated in body, soul and spirit—“we kiss the rod ” and thank God and work. How familiar that man of Nazareth was with the smallest details of labor in the house, and out of it. How well he knew the miracle of the yeast, the leaven in the lump. He knew the light of the house couldn’t shine if it was under a bushel, or any other sort of a smothering lamp-shade, but instead it must be on top of things and shine out. There was the salt, worthless if it had lost its savor; there was the garment not worth patching, and the wine bottles too old to be used.

And how the daily bread problem must have pressed upon this family of Naza­reth! There was the carpenter’s bench which must have helped that out. How strange to think of how this Master of material things so conquered that He brought the very kingdom of Heaven into them. There was ministry and service and capa­bility, and love in labor,.not that which must be ministered unto. Only Mary can ever know all that must have taken place in that wonderful home. So dignified was the patient labor of love there that our homes can never be the same since the labor problem was taken up by this Son of Man, and conquered. Christian civilization has brought more labor into our homes than it has taken out. According to short-sighted people, it would seem as though so much had gone out that our homes ought to be eased of much of their labor. Spinning, weaving, threadmaking, grinding of wheat, tailoring, have all had birth in the home, and gone out, and it would seem that the home might be thus relieved. Life and industry are alike, always begetters of more and more of their kind. The object of life is more life, and so it is with industry. The home has been the cradle of almost every industry, and it does not seem as though the cradle was as yet ready for the garret. Industry and trade grow and thrive on the wealth of the human wants, and we must get away down into the “ whys ” and “ wherefores ” of the present day life before we can begin to understand what most troubles us as women and as housekeepers.

See the good man of today; nothing so burdens him as his wife’s housework. He stands by like a great gentle animal ready to lay down his life, pocket-book and all, on the altar of the labor problem of the home; he has the greatest task in the world on his hands, and it is killing him as well as her. See the difference between any butcher’s shop and his home. The husband superintends one and the wife the other. The labor of one is systematically arranged, every sort of convenience put in it; it is made attractive in every way, the best tools are in it, and pleasantness and order reigri. Why? Because of the money there is in it. The home is not system­atically arranged, every sort of convenience is not put into it; order and pleasantness does not reign, for the woman is doing a hundred different things, and none of them thoroughly, skillfully. Why? Because there is no money in it, nothing is to be made out of it. The wife’s work and care is looked upon as being a sort of nonentity; it is a small business; the sermons are all preached at him, not her. The work is not con­sidered a trade or a profession; it has no commercial value, it has no name. If she signs her name to anything which asks her even what her occupation is, she has none, though we know she has worked fourteen or fifteen hours every day and Sunday since she has been homekeeping, so it goes, and what is to be done? The first thing to do is to elevate the work and in order to elevate it, it must be done well. In order to do it well, we must think well. The best methods invented by you or me, or by our grandmothers or by men, must come to the surface. Mr. Atkinson, the inventor of the Aladdin oven, says he spends most of his time overcoming “the inertia of women in using any new device.” She blindly refuses to do anything but obey the old way,