And Mrs. Black wasn’t. Now, if after the war, she prefers to stay in engineering or some other trade, why should Mr. Black worry? The lady will pay for her own dinner and other things besides. She can send the wash to the laundry, and the baby will be at the _crèche_ for the day, and the children will have dinner at school. And at night, the family will have supper together, which Mr. and Mrs. Black on their way home from the factory can bring from the communal kitchen. Governments already have started the fire in the new cookstove in the communal kitchen which England has set up in London and Germany in Berlin, because Ministries of Food have decided food can be more scientifically and efficiently cooked there than in the homes of the working people. THE NEW IMPROVED HOME Oh, can there be any one who would still wish to take away the new wage envelope? Think what it’s already done for the working class home! Children with shoes on their feet, you know. Women in England are wearing fur coats. Women in France who once wore sabots are now wearing shoes for which they have paid 40 francs, which is $8 a pair. In every warring country working women are shopping, shopping, shopping, as they never shopped before. O yes, it’s thrift and prudence and all that’s proper, to put your earnings in war bonds instead. The rainy day, you know, that’s ahead. And of course one must, for patriotism’s sake, put some of it in war bonds, but not quite all. You see, when there have been almost all rainy days behind and you’ve always wanted something you couldn’t have? Well, Mrs. Black thinks you might as well live in the sunshine and have it, now you can. That’s the way affluence seems to have happened to the working class home all over Europe. Prosperity is fairly gilding over every district in which a munitions plant has arisen. And, oh, well, what if it is gilt? Gilt’s good for little cheerless dingy houses. Do you know that, next to the war trades, the most flourishing trade in all Europe to-day is the cheap jewelry trade? There are places in London’s East End where every other shop or two has come to be a jeweller’s shop, with the windows hung splendidly with all the shining trinkets that bring a shining light to women’s eyes. Mr. Black was home on leave a while ago. He stopped the first thing at the jeweller’s round the corner in Hardwick Row and bought the gold chain and the locket Mrs. Black’s wearing now with his picture in it. Do you know, it was so long since he’d given his wife a present, not since their courting days, that he’d forgotten how? He was a lot more awkward about it than he is about facing a fusillade of German gun-fire. The perspiration just stood out on his forehead as he laid the little package on the kitchen table and said, “Mary, here’s something I thought you might like.”