In the bank nothing.

But what shelter can this refined, intelligent family find to-day for
$400? Certainly nothing with modern conveniences. The lack of these is
_made up by women's work_--hard, rough work. And that is the crux of the
servant problem to-day. It is the reason why more families do not go into
the country to live. The work required in an old house to bring living up
to modern standards is too appalling to be undertaken lightly.

In England the Sunlight Park and other plans, in America the Dayton and
Cincinnati schemes, are samples of what is being done for the $500 to $800
family, but where are the examples (outside the Morris houses) for the
salaried class for whom we are pleading? The great army of would-be
home-makers are forced into a nomadic life by the exigencies resulting
from the great combines--a shifting of offices, a closing of factories, a
breaking up of hundreds of homes. I believe this to be the _chief factor_
in the decline of the American home--a hundred-fold more potent than the
college education of women.

The unthinking comment on this rise in the cost of shelter is usually
condemnation of greedy landlords and soulless capitalists; but is that the
whole story?

In the present order of things it seems to be inevitable that the gain of
one class in the community is loss to another. Probably the law has always
existed, and only the very rapid and sudden changes bring it into
prominence, because of the swift readjustment needed, an operation which
torpid human nature resents when consciously pressed.