In suburban and city life the family can in a measure escape from insufficient care and uncomfortable conditions. That they do so escape, any student of social tendencies will testify. The great increase of restaurants, of clubs and hotels of all grades, shows one phase of the unattractiveness of home life. The city woman is only half a housekeeper; she has only one-eighth of a house as compared with her rural sister. Her control is therefore curtailed until she feels her helplessness in the hands of her landlord. She sighs and turns to other interests. To her must be brought the knowledge of her power as a social factor if she will but use the knowledge she can easily gain. The city woman has amused herself because she has seen nothing better to do with her time. The utilization of her ability is all that is needed to regenerate city life. Without it all efforts will prove fruitless. Education of all women in the principles of sanitary science is the key to race progress in the twentieth century. As an economic factor, the influence of the housewife is of the greatest moment. Production on the farm is only one phase. The city and suburban dweller is a buyer, not a producer. In suburban and city life the housekeeper has more temptations to buy needless articles, food out of season, to go often to the shops, especially on bargain days. She thinks her taste is educated, when it is only aroused to notice what others like. She is led to strive after effects without knowing how to attain them. It has been estimated by advertising experts that ninety per cent of the purchases of the community are determined by women, not always according to their judgment, but by a suppression of it. Woman is made to think that she must buy certain lines of goods. The power of suggestion has been referred to in a preceding chapter. When civilization, as it is called, persuaded woman to give up manufacture and to become a buyer, the first step in the disintegration of the home as a center of information, as well as of industry, was taken. The housewife and mother were made to look to the dealer, and thus to feel their helplessness. This sense of ignorance, this subconscious loss of power over things, only increased the effect of that fatalism which the control of machinery was leading man out from under. It is barely fifty years since woman began to ask questions and insist upon knowing, to claim freedom of movement, a chance to breathe. The time between has been a time of plowed fields, often muddy, usually stony, but the furrows are turning green and the harvest will prove the wisdom of the plowing.