If the mother, also, is a wage-or salary-earner we have the dictum of economists that her inherited and usual place in the family machinery must be filled, if at all successfully, by trained and congenial helpers at a cost in present conditions prohibitive for the average family income.

The estimate of Mr.Taber, in his excellent book, _The Business of the Household_, is that unless for causes of illness or special emergency "no family having an income of less than three thousand dollars has any right to maintain a maid." This estimate seems not only economically correct but shows why so few families have incomes that can release the housemother from housework.
It also shows why only the exceptionally trained and competent vocational worker, if a married woman and mother of young children, can earn enough to release herself from the miscellaneous tasks of the private household without loss to the family treasury.

The easing of the burden of housework, almost unbearable as it has been and responsible, as we have good reason to believe, for much ill-health of women and much unhappiness in marriage, is coming fast and from quite other directions than is often perceived.

The commercial aids of wholesale preparation of food and clothing, and the new fashions in house-building and household management are alike working toward such a reduction of private household service as may enable the average woman to meet the family needs, even where there are several young children, if she is strong in body and trained in efficient ways of working, and yet have considerable time left for other activities.
The apartment house has set the fashion of simplification and reduction of necessary personal service in the home.

The apartment house, with its continuous hot water, its ready heat and its relief from care of sidewalks, halls and stairs, and with its hour-service at command is obviously becoming a favorite place to live in.