Home Problems From a New Standpoint

to domestic service, for when we are able to rise above the trials and tribulations that the institution brings to ourselves and to look upon it from an impersonal point of view, we find that the chief source of our dissatisfaction with it is in the fact that it gives benefits to one class by taking their counterpart from another. The popular toleration of domestic service is due to a misapplication of the theory that the family is the unit of society. This theory has, in the past, played an important part in social evolution by calling attention to and emphasizing the family relation. It has, however, led to many undemocratic practices. This has been not so much because of anything wrong with the theory, as because it has not been supported by a clear conception of the value of the individual life. Thus unsupported, it has, by allowing itself to become entangled with the theory that man is the logical representative of the family in society, taken from woman the incentive to, and the opportunity for, independent action, and has also been responsible for the grossest infringements of her property rights. Thus unsupported, too, it has, by emphasizing the family as an institution, rather than the right of the individual to the family relation, led to the condoning of the maintenance of certain families at the expense of the freedom of individuals to enter into the family relation. Thus in slave times the family connections of the blacks were ruthlessly shatte...