mind? Like the German in the story, I might as well attempt to evolve a camel out of my inner consciousness, as to construct even a tolerable plan of anything so complicated as housekeeping for a whole community must be. Every single clause of the constitution, every detail of every department, would have to be discussed in committee, submitted to the Convention, carried before the Council, perhaps sent back again, and, after all, could not be said to be fairly decided until it had been put into practice and tested by experience. But, in making out my plan, I have consulted nobody, and, in truth, I submit it only to provoke your minds to action. One only charge against the conception I will not suffer,—that it is impossible. Two things can only make co-operative housekeeping impossible:—
1st. That women cannot work together.
2d. That men will not let them, or, at least, will not encourage them to do so.
The first does not trouble me. Let the world slander as it will, I know that the frivolous, the violent, the obstinate, the mean, the malicious, constitute but a small minority of the sex. The great mass of women have both Christianity and common sense, and these are the only two influences needed to make any human corporation work smoothly and successfully. As for the second, that men will not promote it, here, indeed, is room for fears. Had men ever done anything directly for the happiness and development of women, one might hope that they would set forward this. But they will probably distrust or laugh at it, and women, accustomed to take them for God and Bible both, will accept the sneer or the doubt with unquestioning faith, will not so much as attempt to reflect, to reason, and to arrive at an independent judgment even about what is so intensely their own concern as this of housewifery. Well, be it so. Perhaps my bantling must die; but none the less for this shall I in two or three more chapters go on to tell the world what might have been the consequences, could it have become there a Living Power.
