Art is lightening household labor by teaching a better way in house decoration and furnishing. By teaching form, color, and design it is showing that a good color on the wall, which, being vertical, sheds the dust by reason of the force of gravity, may give so much esthetic satisfaction as to take away the necessity for many of our dust-entrapping decorations; that one piece of pottery of good color and form may please the eye more than a whole mantel shelf full of nondescript articles of bric-a-brac; that plain furniture of good form may be more beautiful than that which is covered with carving and brass filigree. Plain, substantial furniture and simplicity in decoration are not only lessening work, but are making it more practicable to turn houses over to professional cleaners. Another change should be mentioned which, though at first thought it seems to have little connection with household management, may prove to be of much significance. This change has come about through the fact that the time of preparation necessary for the professions is continually lengthening. The result of this is that there is in college towns (and with the spread of university extension and of correspondence study there is coming to be in other towns) a class of young people who are still studying, but who must and should support themselves. The young men of this class now take care of furnaces, beat rugs, and perform other such services. The young women take care of children. If it were not for the popular feeling with respect to housework, they might be employed in many other ways. There is a whole class of tasks, like the cleaning of silver, the making of beds, and the serving of meals, which require less skill and experience than cooking and less strength than the heavy cleaning. These, as Lucy Maynard Salmon says in “Domestic Service,” are frequently not well performed, yet, on the other hand, they involve no principles which an intelligent person cannot master in a very short time. After the principles have been learned the tasks become only light routine work, suitable for relaxation after brain work. These tasks might be given to the students referred to above with profit both to themselves and to housekeepers.