It must also be recognized that another difficulty has been the natural conservatism of many women—a conservatism arising from the isolated, home-centred lives many housekeepers lead, and that prevents that intellectual hospitality which is the presager of all true progress. The typical housekeeper, like the Turk, is a born fatalist; because things are as they are, they must always have been so and they must continue so to be. Many persons take pride in being “old-time housekeepers” and look with disfavor on any change. “That plan might succeed in some families, but it would not in mine” is for many others the final settlement of the question. This lack of mental elasticity and the dislike of taking the initiative in any movement must be another obstacle in the way of immediate improvement. It has also been seen that other causes partially explain the difficulty—the love of ease and pleasure, the attempt to keep up appearances, a pretentious manner of living, the frequent desire of both employers and employees to get everything for nothing, the willingness of mistresses to find maids who will do their work half right and of maids to find mistresses who will treat them half right, the endeavor to get “the largest expenditure of woman for the smallest expenditure of money,” a natural tendency among women toward aristocracy and a dislike of everything savoring of social democracy. Some of the difficulty arises from conditions to be expected in a country comparatively new and possessing great possibilities of wealth. The growing luxury among the middle classes not only creates a demand for more employees but it also increases the requisitions upon those rendering service. Those who have lately acquired riches make increasing demands upon their employees, and they must become accustomed to their riches before these demands will be modified. Bishop Potter has said, “Luxury has its decent limits, and we in this land are in danger in many directions of overstepping those limits.”[329] Persons with moderate means are the greatest sufferers from this thoughtless transgression of the bounds of luxury. The remedy lies in such education of the wealthy classes, especially where wealth has been suddenly acquired, as will give a more practical knowledge of general and household economics, a realization of the ethical as well as of the economic principle involved in paying high wages for poor service and abnormally high wages for good service, such an education as will result in greater simplicity in manner of living because it will be governed by ethical, economic, and hygienic principles.