I say fairly, because all cooperation means some sacrifice of whim or special liking.  The well-balanced individual will, however, choose the plan yielding on the whole the greater efficiency, thus following a law of natural selection which, so far, the human race has ignored—­a neglect which has been carrying him toward destruction as surely as there is law in nature.  Is this neglect to go on, or is man to turn before it is too late to a cultivation of the effective life?  In everything else he has advanced, but in his intimate personal relations with nature and natural force he has acted as if he believed himself not only lord of the beasts of the field, but of the very laws of nature without understanding them.  Mechanical progress has come from an humble attitude toward the powers of wind and water.  Home efficiency will arrive just as soon as the home-keeper will put herself in a receptive frame of mind and be prepared to learn her limitations and the extent of her control of material things.  When she will stop saying “I do not believe” and set herself to learn patiently the facts in the case, then will housekeeping take on a new phase and the house become the nursery of effective workers who will at the same time enjoy life.  To manage this machine-driven house will require delicate handling; but let women once overcome their fear of machinery and they will use it with skill.

The undue influence of sentiment retards all domestic progress.  Because our grandfather’s idea of perfect happiness was to sit before the fire of logs, we are satisfied with the semblance in the form of the asbestos-covered gas-log.  “It is not for the iconoclastic inventor or architect to improve the hearth out of existence.”  Sentiment is a useful emotion, but when it held open funerals of diphtheria victims, society stepped in and forbade.  With a certain advance in social consciousness public opinion will step in and regulate sentiment in regard to many things depending on individual whim.

Heating might now be accomplished without dust and ashes, without the destructive effects of steam, if enough houses would take electricity to enable a company to supply it in the form of a sort of dado carrying wires safely embedded in a non-conducting substance, or in the form of a carpet threaded with conducting wire.  Both heating and cooling apparatus could be installed in the shape of a motor to replace the punkah man and the present buzz-wheel fan, and to give fresh air without the opening of windows which leads to half our housekeeping miseries.  O woman, how can you resist the thought of a clean, cool house, sans dust, sans flies and mosquitoes, sans the intolerable street-noise, with abundance of fresh filtered air at the desired temperature!  It is all ready at your hand.  A windmill on the roof can store power, or a solar motor can save the sun’s rays, or capsules of compressed air may be had to run the machine, if only you were not so afraid of the very word machine