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labor of working men and working women in factories and shops.
Individual Housekeeping Doomed.
The family consumes but no longer produces. The essential labors of the housekeeper are now four in number: matters of cleanliness (cleaning the floors, dusting, heating, care of lamps, etc.), cooking (preparation of dinners and suppers), washing, and the care of the linen and clothing of the family (darning and mending).
These are painful and exhausting labors; they absorb all the time and all the energies of the working woman, who must in addition furnish her hours of labor in a factory. But it is nevertheless certain that the task of our grandmothers included a much greater number of operations. And, in addition, they possessed a quality which is completely lacking in the household labors of the working woman of our days: the latter having entirely lost their quality of being useful to the State fro the standpoint of national economy, for these labors do not create any, new values; they do not contribute to the prosperity of the country.
The working woman would in vain spend all the day from morning to evening cleaning her home, washing and ironing the linen, using herself up in ceaseless efforts to keep her worn-out clothing in order, she might kill herself preparing with her modest resources such food as might please her, and there would nevertheless at nightfall remain not a material result of all her day's work, and she would have created with her indefatigable hands nothing that could be considered as a commodity on the commercial market. Even if a working woman should live a
