This page has been validated.
MARRIAGE AS A TRADE
211

could be produced more cheaply in a factory furnished with vats than in a kitchen supplied with saucepans; it was more economical to buy bread than to bake it, because the most economical way of baking was to bake it in the mass. A man might esteem the accomplishment of pickle-making or linen-weaving as an excellent thing in woman; but unless expense was really no object he would not encourage his wife and daughters to excel in these particular arts, since It was cheaper to buy sheets and bottled onions round the corner than to purchase the raw material and set the female members of his family to work upon it. In the redistribution of labour which followed upon the new order of things man, not for the first time, had invaded the sacred sphere of woman and annexed a share thereof.

The natural and inevitable result of this new and improved state of things was that woman deprived of the productive industries at which she had formerly earned her keep and something over for her employer, was no longer a source of monetary profit to that employer. On the contrary, so far as money went and so long as she remained in the home, she was often a dis-