It is possible that such conditions are not confined to “the uninhabited districts west of Schenectady,” and that elsewhere there may be despairing housekeepers ready to cry out against all serious study of domestic questions, because such study has not yet had an immediate and practical bearing on the management of their individual households. It is, indeed, not improbable, for there is in every clime the tradition of a time when household helpers were abundant, competent, and cheap,--a golden age when harmony reigned in the household and domestic discord was unknown. Has this peaceful condition been rudely broken up by the meddlesome interference of domestic busy-bodies? Has progress been hindered by the club studying household economics, by the investigator seeking for facts, by the theorist trying to square the ideal with the real, and by students of social conditions anxious to explain the present by the past? Is the only remedy for present ills the suppression of all discussion, since discussion breeds contempt and unhappiness? Is the club to revert to Browning, the investigator to confine himself to the comparatively safe field of ancient history, the theorist to live in the future, and the student of social conditions to content himself with flower missions and soup-kitchens? If it can be shown that conditions are worse than they have ever been before, and that discussion and investigation are responsible for this deterioration, then assuredly the club should change the field of its activity, and all discussion of the household affairs should cease. But the immediate dissolution of the club studying household economics is not imminent. The premises on which its detractors base their criticisms are false, and hence the conclusions deduced from these premises are illogical and unreasonable. All literature goes to show that an ideal condition of domestic service exists and has existed only in the castles of Spain. And recent literature and recent legislation do show that some little progress has been made in the study of domestic service as an occupation, in spite of the fact that individual housekeepers still have and always will have trials and perplexities that at times seem almost overwhelming. The Hudson empties its waters into the ocean, yet twice each day the mightier force of the ocean tide turns the current back upon itself,--in winter it bears upstream the moving mass of ice, and in summer it makes its overbalancing power felt almost to the very source of the great river. The individual housekeeper feels only the force of the household current that bears her helpless to her destination,--she forgets the still stronger force of society that makes itself felt over and beyond that of the individual home. * * * * *