So that I find myself obliged to put aside all Mrs. Stetson’s stirring appeals for a moral advance as very interesting, but as having really no bearing on her proposed reforms, which must therefore be considered on their own merits. Criticism of the proposed reorganisation of domestic arrangements I leave to the practical housewife. It is only the fitness of the mother, or perhaps, for anything the employer can tell, the about-to-become mother, for regular work away from home that I wish to consider. Her own physical condition, to say nothing of the liability of her children to get measles, whooping-cough, croup, and mumps, will prevent her services from being warmly appreciated in most skilled occupations. Then Mrs. Stetson leaves us in the dark as to what these remunerative occupations are in which mothers may earn a living in their leisure hours. On p. 9 Mrs. Stetson says:-- The making and managing of the great engines of modern industry, the threading of earth and sea in our vast systems of transportation, the handling of our elaborate machinery of trade, commerce, and government--these things could not be done so well by women in their present degree of economic development. This is not owing to lack of the essential human faculties necessary to such achievements, nor to any inherent disability of sex, but to the present condition of woman forbidding the development of this degree of economic ability. While reducing maternal duties to a minimum, Mrs. Stetson admits no disposition to evade them, and if she nevertheless considers that women are hindered by no inherent disability of sex from equalling the industrial achievements of men, it must be because she thinks the interruption of work in early middle life is of no great importance. The fact that whereas marriage generally stimulates a man to work more strenuously, it lessens a woman’s power of concentrating her energies on her profession or industrial employment, must always handicap her in industrial competition with men. Again, in advocating that the varied occupations of the housewife or house servant should be exchanged for specialised employment in large kitchens, in crêches, in the bedrooms of apartment houses, she is really condemning women to a worse servitude than anything necessarily imposed by domestic service. The girl who is successful with two-year-old babies is to manage babies all day long, and for life, for crêche experience does not qualify for admission to the kindergarten or the high school, and marriage is to offer no release. The good cook is to live in a restaurant kitchen, cooking meals for all hours in the day. The professional chambermaid is expected to look forward to being a charwoman always. Mrs. Stetson has strange ideas about the effects of regular outside work:--