Hitherto, as I have said, this field of research has remained comparatively untouched. In the first place, economists have generally been men, and have naturally devoted their energies to the elucidation of the problems of industry and business which concern men most closely. Few women, on the other hand, have until recently received any training in economics, and it has never occurred to them that the familiar and wearisome problems of the rent, the butcher's bill, and the children's clothes, together with the difficulty of finding a satisfactory cook, may have a wider aspect than the narrow and personal one. But even as it is, the few women who have distinguished themselves in the sphere of economics have in a note or a casual remark pointed out distinctions between household management and other branches of industry which cast a flood of light on the whole subject. There is a paragraph in the second volume of "Industrial Democracy"[18] which lays down the difference between the underlying principles of business and of the administration of the home in a few words which might serve as the text for a volume. It is precisely this difference, first clearly indicated by Mrs. Webb, which constitutes the second ground for the common neglect of this branch of economics. A factory or a shop is run for profit; a household simply to provide comfort and convenience for its members. To put it in technical language, in the world of industry we are concerned with exchange values, but in the home with use values alone. From this distinction, overlooked by reason of its obviousness, there flow a large number of consequences which will be discussed later. At present we are only concerned to show that economists, with their eyes fixed on trade and the mechanism of trade, very naturally neglected that section of life in which values, material and immaterial, were being continually created, but for use alone, not for commercial purposes.