The Wreck of the Home

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 10, 1908

The Wreck of the Home

UNDER the title, “The Wreck of the Home,” Hampton’s Broadway Magazine for November contains a most important article by Rheta Childe Dorr. The article explains why and how one third of the women in America are being driven from home into the ranks of the bread-winners. The number of women wage-earners is growing faster than the birth-rate. Increasing thousands of homes, says the article, are wrecked because woman, the home-maker, has neither the time, means, nor domestic knowledge to manage a home. The writer believes that our whole social fabric is resting on a crumbling foundation when five million women are toiling by day in a factory and shop or elsewhere with no time to learn to cook or keep house. Nearly one hundred thousand of these women are the sole support of their families. What becomes of their children is an important question, in the answer to which every citizen is interested. Tens of thousands of these children are in eleemosynary institutions, and other thousands are in reformatories.—Selected.