Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - Women of the Future - 1916.pdf/23

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est and dearest. Whether these homes of the future will be just groups of rooms in huge buildings like our modern apartments, or whether they will be little cottages in gardens, is a matter that the coming generations will have to work out for themselves. But whatever their individual style and character may be, they will be far more desirable than our present-day homes, maintained by the unskilled labor of housewives or domestic servants.

If, in the coming social order, three or four women will perform the labor that is performed by twenty women to-day, there will be a tremendous release of labor power that is being wasted under the present unorganized, antiquated system of keeping house. If four women can cook for twenty families in a centrał kitchen more economically and more efficiently than twenty women in their individual kitchens, then the sixteen women who are no longer engaged in cooking will be released for other socially necessary labor. In our present, capitalistic society the release of labor power as a result of new inventions or improved methods of work usually means increased competition on the labor market, more unemployment, and harder conditions of work. In Socialistic society the release of new labor power will mean a shorter workday. Women, released from individual, domestic labor, will help to shorten the general workday by their socially productive labor.

If all women of the future are going to work, not as unpaid domestic workers, but as well-paid social workers, then it is obvious that all women will be self-supporting. This brings us to the profound change that Socialism will bring about in the marriage relation.

MARRIAGE

Mutual love of husband and wife and a happy marriage relation is a condition to be most ardently desired for the benefit of individuals as well as for the welfare of society. But this desirable condition does not depend upon the economic basis of marriage as we know it. A marriage is not made better or happier because the wife needs the husband to support her or because the husband

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