The education is not a mistake; the fault lies in this, that the industries of women have not kept pace with their advancing education. They have been exempt from bread-winning to a degree unknown in the old countries, and the average education is far higher than exists elsewhere among women. They have startled the world a little by attempting a few of the intellectual industries hitherto monopolized by men, and, though the opening of the professions, or, indeed, all lines of human industry, to women, is not to be undervalued, of almost infinitely greater importance is the application of scientific economical principles to the large sphere of work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a disastrously undeveloped condition, just because it is in their hands. The low rate of female wages leaves them the monopoly of it, and they dawdle along in the ways of their grandmothers, out of sight behind the advancing masculine industries. It is surprising to foreigners that in the application of the division of labor principle to domestic work, we are actually behind them, that we still permit such excess of work and excess of waste in our domestic arrangements. Cooking and sewing, the two leading branches of domestic industry, are with them to a very large degree trades, while nursing and laundry-work are trades in a far greater degree than with us. Upon this point of the organization of domestic industry, though one that I have long been considering, I can do no better than to refer to the suggestive article of Mrs. E. M. King in the _Contemporary Review_ for December, 1873. The substance of this article was presented at the last meeting of the British Association. The Right Honorable Mr. Forster occupied the chair, and at the close of the discussion remarked that he should not like to give up his private home. Now, it is not to be supposed that Royalty would at once give up its palaces to rush into the society of a set of co-operative homes, nor that Right Honorables with "large fortunes" would make close bargains in domestic service. The scheme at the outset would recommend itself only to those whose incomes did not provide an adequate supply for their wants on the present wasteful plan of domestic life, and who saw in this system a means to secure larger returns for their outlay of money, and it could advance in favor only as it fulfilled this promise. Seeing a trustworthy principle of economy in the plan, the _Spectator_ turned pale, and declaimed against the destruction of the time-honored English homes; and London builders began to consult Mrs. King in regard to the house arrangements for carrying out her plan. There will be no difficulty in preserving the desired privacy for the family, though the wearying privacy of many English homes leads not a few to think it is not worth preserving in the English degree.