The trouble goes much deeper, however, even to the foundations. The
nineteenth-century house is not suited to twentieth-century needs. In
other words, lack of adaptation to present conditions of the houses we
live in is a large factor in the prevailing domestic discontent. The next
largest has been referred to as attempting a style of living beyond one's
income.
In all other walks of life, in transportation, in manufacturing, machinery
has come in to replace the heavier and more mechanical portions of labor.
The steam-shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of
mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save
human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar
grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the
housemaid bending over some piece of work, is to realize the difference.
In few, very few operations is it necessary to-day that men should bend
their backs, but in how many household processes is the worker expected to
get down on all fours? The free-born American rebels. Perchance it is the
unconscious protest over a four-footed ancestry, or it may be that disuse
has really weakened the spinal column.
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