THE EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL CHANGES UPON THE HOMES OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS WORKERS The middle class worker is a worker whose remuneration is sufficient to allow him to maintain a plane of living commonly considered adequate for his physical well being. His employment is not necessarily in the skilled trades, for many of the skilled workers are kept on a margin of bare subsistence, while many unskilled workers are able to enjoy a considerable degree of comfort. So much depends upon the economic conditions of a country or section, and the demand for and supply of labor that a classification according to occupation or remuneration would not be feasible. In congested cities where the cost of living is high, employment uncertain, and labor plentiful, the unskilled worker frequently finds it impossible to live and enjoy the simple comforts and decencies of life. On the other hand, in newly settled communities, where labor is scarce and opportunities many, the unskilled worker is often able to accumulate property and to give his children advantages usually confined to the prosperous business class in a large city. Hence, in discussing the middle class worker, he will be considered as a man having sufficient pay, irrespective of his occupation, or the occupation of his family to enjoy a plane of living generally accepted as necessary to a normal and healthful life. Peoples that make any progress constantly press toward an ideal. This ideal is the standard--so to speak--accepted by all classes to a certain extent, reflected in the schools, churches and all other social institutions. It is a part of the spirit of the age. To judge a class by any other standard, to expect its members to embrace the ideals held by their ancestors because we think it more in keeping with their financial circumstances, is as unfair as it is illogical. It is expecting of others what we feel no one has a right to expect of us. To share in the benefits of our social institutions and the advance they make from year to year is a right claimed by all irrespective of class, that a woman no longer “contented with bare floors and tin dishes,” or even ingrain carpets and porcelain, or a blue calico gown and white apron for an afternoon social function, does not signify she is losing her sense of the fitness of things but that she no longer lives in an age of bare floors and tin dishes and that she too has through imitation shared in the rise of material standards. When a class departs from a seemingly sensible course, it is more often a joining of the procession of imitators and if the example is not worthy of imitation, the fault is further up the line. The middle class worker has as his goal the social class just ahead of him. He is following a standard he did not establish, but he must go with the current or drift back. One cannot long stand still.