that they might contribute in
other and more effectual, as well as more agreeable, ways to the common weal.
Our women, as well as our men, are members of the industrial army, and leave it
only when maternal duties claim them. The result is that most women, at one time
or another of their lives, serve industrially some five or ten or fifteen years,
while those who have no children fill out the full term.«
    »A woman does not, then, necessarily leave the industrial service on
marriage?« I queried.
    »No more than a man,« replied the doctor. »Why on earth should she? Married
women have no housekeeping responsibilities now, you know, and a husband is not
a baby that he should be cared for.«
    »It was thought one of the most grievous features of our civilization that
we required so much toil from women,« I said; »but it seems to me you get more
out of them than we did.«
    Dr. Leete laughed. »Indeed we do, just as we do out of our men. Yet the
women of this age are very happy, and those of the nineteenth century, unless
contemporary references greatly mislead us, were very miserable. The reason that
women nowadays are so much more efficient co-laborers with the men, and at the
same time are so happy, is that, in regard to their work as well as men's, we
follow the principle of providing every one the kind of occupation he or she is
best adapted to. Women being inferior in strength to men, and further
disqualified industrially in special ways, the kinds of occupation reserved for
them, and the conditions under which they pursue them, have reference to these
facts. The heavier sorts of work are everywhere reserved for men, the lighter
occupations for women. Under no circumstances is a woman permitted to follow any
employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degree of labor, to her
sex. Moreover, the hours of women's work are considerably shorter than those of
men's, more frequent vacations are granted, and the most careful provision is
made for rest when needed. The men of this day so well appreciate that they owe
to the beauty and grace of women the chief zest of their lives and their main
incentive to effort, that they permit them to work at all only because it is
fully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sort adapted
to their powers, is well for body and mind, during the period of maximum
physical vigor.