testify! One by one the burdens of citizenship have been assumed, and because of this fact every thinking wage-earner was bound to get a glimpse of the outer world from which she had been so long excluded. Many begin to look forth at last. And what do they see?
They see, to begin with, that the mediæval notion of home—as a prison for mothers as well as a cradle for children—has little to recommend it. In the stately homes of England there may be room to live, room for romance and idealism. But the number of these homes is small in comparison with the number of one-tenement and two-tenement rooms! In all some 120,000 babes die every year, and not 30 per cent. of all school-going children are thoroughly healthy and well cared for. Bad as all this is, it was infinitely worse in the "good old days." "The grace of hospitality is gone, and the art of good manners." Perhaps, but the black plague is gone too, and a whole bevy of horrible diseases; drunkenness is declining, and the dreadful things it brings in its train. Little was heard of these in the old days of stately manners, little was heard of child labour, and of miseries that are now searched out and relieved. The thinking, wage-earning woman may see that to-day is dark, but she does not make the mistake of thinking that yesterday was brighter. Just as the condition of the worker in the great warehouse or factory is better than is that of the poor sweated home-worker, so the condition of the child in an elementary school to-day is better than was that of a child in a slum home, or even in a cottage
