The existing institution of marriage came into being when woman had no real field of employment outside the home, since its income was for the most part received in kind, and the wife was thus indispensable for turning it to account. Her domestic activity was of great value from the point of view of national economy, and under these circumstances the joint estate was natural. Furthermore, the mistress of the house possessed at this time—as manager of the consumption of the commodities she had prepared from raw materials—a freedom of action and an authority which she now quite naturally lacks in her own eyes and those of her husband. It is of no avail that she has a legal right to be supported by her husband according to his position and circumstances; for if her task frequently consists simply in asking her husband for money and keeping an account of its expenditure through the cook and the needlewoman, she has reason to feel herself kept in a humiliating way. Neither indirectly nor directly is it through her work that the food comes to the table or the clothes are fitted to the body, since the husband alone earns the means wherewith she—efficiently or otherwise—keeps house. For this reason wives are becoming increasingly desirous of personally earning a livelihood. They see how their husbands are developed through devotion to a profession, through the patience, the accumulation, and tension of forces which this demands. And only professional training, in the opinion of modern woman, can give her the same energy, only a direct income can give her the same certainty of her fitness for work. But there is another expedient which would afford these advantages without, however, driving women away from home, namely, that their special training for, and their work in, the field of housekeeping and the care of children should be as serious as in any other occupation. Not until she has a sense of the new value of her domestic work will the wife be able to demand that it shall be economically estimated like any other efficient work.