The theory that women have suffered and are still suffering from the tyranny of men does not seem sound when one considers that the women of the well-to-do classes are always the first to benefit by a surplus of leisure. Many men work eight or more hours a day while their wives are not obliged to perform any kind of work. The women’s time is their own and their husbands resent neither their leisure nor their idleness. This indifference on the part of men to the complete economic dependence of women has its basis in sex, out of which arose a feeling of responsibility for the protection of the family, at first from enemies and later from economic cares. The employments of the women of the leisure class are tersely stated by Veblen when he says of the well-to-do household: “Under a mandatory code of decency, the time and effort of the members of such a household are required to be ostensibly all spent in a performance of conspicuous leisure, in the way of calls, drives, clubs, sewing-circles, sports, charity organizations, and other like social functions. Those persons whose time and energy are employed in these matters privately avow that all these observances, as well as the incidental attention to dress and other conspicuous consumption, are very irksome but altogether unavoidable. Under the requirement of conspicuous consumption of goods, the apparatus of living has grown so elaborate and cumbrous, in the way of dwellings, furniture, bric-a-brac, wardrobe, and meals, that the consumers of these things cannot make way with them in the required manner without help. Personal contact with the hired persons whose aid is called in to fulfill the routine of decencies is commonly distasteful to the occupants of the house, but their presence is endured and paid for, in order to delegate to them a share in this generous consumption of household goods. The presence of domestic servants, and of the special class of body servants in an eminent degree, is a concession of physical comfort to the moral need of pecuniary decency.”[57] The status of the women of leisure is social rather than economic. It has its basis in the economic strength of the husband but the social status of the wife is far superior to that of the man of the family.