double at least the number of good female domestics. There are to-day in America one million of vacancies for female domestics. Why are our women so anxious to hunt for public places, where there are really no vacancies?

The aversion to house-work had much to justify it, as long as it was very severe drudgery, and it from early morning till late at night. But now, and every day more, the newlyinvented household machinery, the additional discovered uses of natural forces and substances, and the improved household and kitchen furniture, have brought, and are bringing relief in many ways. The kitchen, the bedrooms, the washings, the milk-work, the sewing, mending, and knitting is much less formidable in amount and kind than formerly. Ready-made clothes are coming more and more in use, and the heavy lone tasks are growing both fewer and less irksome. Bread and meat are better prepared for ready use, and the time is near, when all these aids to household life will be doubled and extended.

And right here we must call the attention of the agitators of the woman question to the further fact, that all the improvements are men's handiwork. This disposes of the sophistry so often put forward, that woman's so-called inferior position originated and has been continued from a male policy inimical to women. For surely the fact, pointed out, proves that there is no such policy, and a little common sense will teach us, that there is really no inferior position. There are maltreated women and there are maltreated men, but not half as many as there are restless females as well as males, whom no conditions could satisfy, not even those chosen by themselves. What a pleasure it is to turn from them to the body of human society, that is mostly at rest, and turns a deaf ear to agitations, and lets us understand that many of the proposed changes are neither wise for women nor just for men.

The thing to be solved is not then a mere woman, but a family household question. Nor is it a new problem, but one as old as human interhabitation. The greater part belongs to conventional rule, and but little to political governing. The line where female work begins and male labor ends, can neither be the same in different periods, nor is it alike in any two households. The lack of domestics has developed in America both a new species of husband as well as of wife. European males and they will call our married men "henpecked," and say of them: that they are too much tied to their wives' apron-strings. Ask European women and they will describe American women as a mixture of Do-nothingism,

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prudery, and peevishness. If these conceptions were true it would dispose of all the talk about female hardships. But they are not true, and the amount of it all is, that scarcity of female help turned many things to male hands, that are in Europe attended to by women; and it made the marriage relation much more an intimate home-life than in Europe. As hired girls multiplied, the husbands disappeared again from the kitchens, the nurseries, and other precincts, mostly from their own good sense, but if not, by hints and demonstrations, which I need not describe. These processes are still happily going on, and it will not be long before Europeans can come over here and meet facsimiles of their households in all the varieties and grades of human existences.

We join in no useless wails at the inevitable reaction, that has set in upon us. We propose to accept the situation now, and to advise others to do so. We think, that all the complaints. of restless males and females, amount, when analyzed, simply to the crotchet, that it would have been better if creation in Paradise had stopped with the original manus homo. Let those who think so organize an exodus for their sex respectively on some island. Those of us, who do not, will prefer to fight it out on the old line. We have passed as a good society, during the past fifty years, from a much-dispersed society to one more densely populated but hardly settled. The old folks had their troubles; the young folks theirs, and so will their successors. The early settlers solved their difficulties by reconciling their behavior with surrounding circumstances; and our age is but repeating the operation, that will go on to the end of time. Society is ever in motion, American society only a little more so. The changes are here more frequent and more rapid; hence our wiseacres are more puzzled with all their jumping at conclusions. Oregon is to-day, where Ohio was seventy-five years ago; Ohio is where the eastern states were in the early part of this century. And the Atlantic states are but our pioneer in leading the way to assimilations with European social conditions. And they are ever changing, ever varying, but also ever equating differences.

A wise obedience to necessities is ever the right path; happy the people that follow it.

The opposite course is that, which lies in the propensity to first unsettle, and then settle men and things by voting. We men owe to our good women the amende honorable for not telling them long ago, that we have not mended society in that way; but have rather played havoc with ourselves. Our mistake was, that we took, blindfolded political, path-finding for

government. What male universal suffrage came to, in America, after seventy years' voting, Disraeli, with whom we seldom agree, states with remarkable correctness: "They began with fraternity and universal charity; and ended in bloodshed and spoliation." Some women tell us, that had there been female as well as male suffrage, and the result would have been more humane as well as more wise. We cannot gainsay it, except by putting surmise against surmise, which is no argument. We can only pass the subject to others for further elucidation.

CHAPTER XXVI.

COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM.

"One man cannot of himself fulfil the object of his life and existence; it requires besides manifold associative co-operation.”—Thomas of Aquin.

WHEN Aristotle pronounced man to be a Zooon Politicon, he stated the truth that is the key to every social and political problem; and to it Thomas of Aquin added the reason, as quoted above. And all that have worked for human progress have acted on these perceptions, and urged the perfection of human society through the formation of bodies-politic. We can name but a few of the greater men, for to name all would fill a book. They are Solon, Lycurgus, Moses, Confucius, Plato, Dante, Sir Thomas More, Grote, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Harrington, Montesquieu, Fenelon, Beccaria, Adam Smith, Bentham, Franklin, Babeuf, Owen, St. Simon, Comte, Lasalle, and last, not least, our own Carey, of Philadelphia-all striving to relieve their fellow-mortals of their weakness as single beings, and to induce them to overcome it by fellowship; none without some error, none without much. more truth, and each successor adding to the general progress; many ideal propositions, but all resting on the actualities of life, and being co-laborers in what Pope calls

"The general order since the whole began,

Is kept in Nature, and is kept in man.'

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But side by side with these progressives has been another class of men, whose premise was man's natural self-sufficiency. They had to accept, in spite of themselves, a minimum of existence as their standard of life, and, as to government, their model could not well be any other than a self-governing monad man. They had to reject the perfectibility of mankind by social and political organization, and their basis had to remain, what they called "natural laws," which, whenever it was analyzed, turned out to be mere animalism. The true inner nature of man never allowed this tendency to be carried to the

nihilism which was really its principle, though Kai-Muni or Buddha, Diogenes and Pachomius came very near it.

After the dark ages had passed away, and after the Renaissance had re-enlightened human conduct, Quakerism attempted to revive human self-sufficiency in a friendlier form, and Anna Lee restored Monachism with cohabitation of the sexes. And Bastiat's still lovelier mind added "the Harmonies Economiques" or " self-sufficiency of society" under inorganic conditions. Their common error is: that they mistook the higher animalism of man, his crown of glory, his inextinguishable desire, to enhance his existence, for artificialness. They saw the increased dangers which sprang out of every advance in human life, and jumped at the conclusion that, not to progress is safer, than to augment human capacities. But they did not see that the same law exists throughout nature, to wit: that the more powerful the forces are which man subjects to his use, the more careful he has to be in their employment. Why argue as to political matters for an entire disuse or a minimum, when in mechanics and the employment of natural forces generally, we are ever striving for an augmentation, subject to wise control? We shall meet this question again further on.

Before proceeding we must, however, call attention to one of the causes that has given to our theme a fluctuating and indefinite character. It is, in our opinion, that it never went by a generally accepted comprehensive name. Many would, in spite of themselves, mistake this or that phase of the subject for the whole question. This has particularly been the case as to Communism and Socialism, each presenting but one aspect, and yet taken and used by the public as if they were identical. They both belong indeed to one subject, to wit: the conversion of private wealth and individual possessions into public wealth or collective possessions. To us, fully as we recognize the difficulty of coining a proper joint-name for our subject, it seems, that to call it "commonwealthism" will much facilitate our inquiries. It will assist us to understand at once that Communism and Socialism are but modalities of an ever-existing human necessity, which assumes in our day peculiar shapes in consequence of the special conditions of the respective human societies. The name "Commonwealth" for "Republic" has been adopted, as we think, in consequence of a change in the public mind as to the objects of government, and our word but expresses the mutations herein that distinguish our century.

All our conceptions on the subject must rest on the premise that private wealth precedes public wealth, and is its pre-condition. The moment more is taken than can be easily spared