spacious palace we might build in combination. But this happiness, if happiness it be, is that of the savage, who is equally undisciplined and prone to petty jealousies; and if women continue to choose it in preference to the larger development afforded by united action, no matter what our culture or refinement may be, fundamentally we shall belong to the same category as savages, since it will be a similar contemptible Self-hood that stands in the way of our progress, and inevitably, therefore, in the way of the progress of the world.
The Effects of Combination.
As, then, the vast fabric of masculine civilization is based upon agriculture, so let us unite quickly to build the feminine civilization upon housewifery. "The coneys are a feeble folk, but they make their nests in the rock." So are we feeble,—O, the weakest, most defenceless of created things!—but we too will make our nests in a rock,—the rock of Union, and in it we will hew out our foundations deep and wide. Offering up our small jealousies on the altar of a nobler womanhood, we will forego, as all our brothers have done who have risen above barbarians, a little of our present starveling independence of each other for the sake of the inestimable freedom and safety and abundance that must ensue to us all in an organized feminine community. For the leaders of our association we will elect the women who, by their pre-eminent fidelity and success in the "small things" of their own households, have shown themselves worthy of the great things of many households combined. Obedient to their experience, and under their wise and gentle guidance, our plain "home-cooking," to our husbands' astonishment and delight, will rapidly develop in the co-operative kitchens into the magic modern art which, out of Nature's raw material, creates new substances and elaborates new flavours, but whose every combination will now waft an aroma of daintiness and freshness impossible to restaurant or hotel, because it is an emanation of delicate ladyhood solely! Our co-operative laundries will not only
