It is assumed that the work of women is "housekeeping." I should like to put the question suddenly to a thousand men. What is twentieth-century housekeeping? I venture the guess that less than a hundred would take into account the utter difference in their wives' duties from their mothers', as they remember them; and yet the house, even the flat, is built more or less along the old lines. The women do not know enough to assert themselves, and have not the skill to show the builder what is wrong. The architects could tell tales if they would. The utter ignorance of what a house means, of the steps necessary to make a successful livable place, is appalling. The young man who has $3000 as a legacy feels he can build. His wife chooses the location near her friends whose houses she likes, and the architect is called in. Do you wish back stairs? Are you to keep three servants or none? Do you wish the rooms separate or connecting? All such questions find a blank stare. "What difference does that make in the style and price?" the would-be owner says. The architect is not always able to show him that these little things are the whole problem in building a _home_. The house as a home is merely outer clothing, which should fit as an overcoat should, without wrinkles and creases that show their ready-made character. The woman, born housekeeper as she considers herself, is rigid in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied with the result. She is used to material which puckers and stretches in her clothing; she cannot understand the inflexibility of wood and stone. The remedy is for high-school girls, probably even grammar-school pupils as well, to have along with their drawing some problems in house-planning and some lessons in carpentry. It will be seen from the foregoing glance at the rapid change and steady deterioration of houses that the care of such living-places must involve special discomforts in most cases. The time required to keep clean old splintered floors, to carry pails of water up and down stairs, to dry out the cloths--the base boards with their grimy streaks tell the story of carelessness--is not counted in the wage schedule. Why is there so much dirt brought into the house? Because shoes and streets are muddy. Why is there so much lint? Because we have too many things in a room--too much wear and tear.