This lack of knowledge explains to a certain extent why so many are unwilling to perform household work. It is natural to dislike work that brings failure, to enjoy what brings success. The average girl who “hates to sew” and “hates to do housework” would often find pleasure in both did she but have systematic knowledge concerning the work. The city boarding-house, crowded with women who “can’t endure housekeeping,” is one product of this combination of ignorance and aversion. In New York City there are said to be but thirteen thousand families in individual houses. The rest of the population are crowded into tenements, rookeries, boarding-houses, flats, and hotels. But there are other reasons besides ignorance that explain this aversion to household work. There is a well-founded belief that the majority of women dislike both manual labor and self-supporting labor, and this fact applies both to housekeeper and to housemaid. We have passed the stage when it is permitted a man to say, “The world owes me a living.” We not only allow a woman to say this in effect, but we sometimes praise her for her womanliness in saying it. How often one hears the remark, “Her father has abundant means, it is unnecessary for her to support herself.” The average woman without family cares is self-supporting because dire necessity compels, not because honorable work is the birthright inheritance of every human being. Again, the mistress of the household constantly speaks of the routine work of the house as drudgery, and the houseworker, whose chief interest in it is one of dollars and cents, coins a still harsher term, and calls work a curse.