This comparison has been suggested, because the question is so often asked: Why can we not have trained domestics as we have trained nurses? The answer must be that, in the present condition of affairs, the resemblance between nurses and domestics is only superficial. The trained nurse is the product, not of the family that has suffered from the lack of such trained service, but of the discovery by the medical profession that its labors must be ineffectual if orders are not carried out by those who understand the reasons why these orders are given. The more rapid the advance in scientific investigation made in the medical world, the more rapid the advance made in all grades of service connected with the medical profession. Pressure is exerted from above and works downwards. More and more the subject of health becomes one of the prevention, rather than of the cure, of ill health. The distance between physician and nurse and nurse and patient grows less as each understands better the function each has to perform in securing good health. Some parts of the household have already been put on a scientific basis. It is to-day protected from impure water-supply, from defective drainage, from poisonous foods, from contagious diseases, but not through the efforts of the household itself. These benefits it has reaped through the labors of scientific experts who, through unwearied investigation, have discovered the means of preventing certain large classes of diseases. Sanitary engineering and sanitary chemistry have become professions through the work of scientific investigators. When housekeepers, through scientific investigation, have made a profession of housekeeping, then, and not till then, will trained service in the household be possible. It is very easy to see why progress in the household has up to this time been so slow, and why it has, for the most part, been made through forces exerted from without rather than from within. But the Chinese wall that has so long surrounded it is giving way, and the signs of the times point to another international exposition, when, side by side with Mrs. Gamp and the trained nurse, will be found Dora Copperfield and the new home,--the product of the trained minds of scientific investigators. ECONOMICS AND ETHICS IN DOMESTIC SERVICE