The solitary savage knew neither specialisation nor organisation--he "did his own work." This process gives the maximum of effort and the minimum of results. Specialised and organised industry gives the minimum of effort and the maximum of results. That is civilised industry.
The so idealised and belauded "home industries" are still savage. The modern home is built and furnished by civilised methods. Arts, crafts, and manufactures, sciences, professions, many highly sublimated processes of modern life combine to make perfect the place where we live; but the industries practised in that place remain at the first round of the ladder.
Instead of having our pick of the latest and best workers, we are here confined to the two earliest--the Housewife and the Housemaid. The housewife is the very first, and she still predominates by so large a majority as to make us wonder at the noisy prominence of "the servant question." (It is not so wonderful, after all, for that class of the population which keeps servants is the class which makes the most noise.) Even in rich America, even in richest New York, in _nine-tenths_ of the families the housewife "does her own work." This is so large a proportion that we will consider the housewife first--and fully.
Why was woman the first worker? Because she is a mother. All living animals are under the law of, first, self-preservation, and, second, race-preservation. But the second really comes first; the most imperative forces in nature compel the individual to sacrifice to the race. This law finds its best expression in what we call "the maternal sacrifice." Motherhood means giving. There is no limit to this urgency. The mother gives all she has to the young, including life. In many low organisms the sacrifice is instantaneous and complete--the mother dies in giving birth to the young--just lays her eggs and dies. Such forms of life have to remain low, however. The defunct mothers can be of no further use to the young, so they have to be little instinctive automata, hopelessly arrested in the path of progress.
Nature perceived that this wholly sacrified mother was not the best kind. Little by little the usefulness of the mother was prolonged, the brooding mother, the feeding mother, lastly the nursing mother, highest of all. Order mammalia stands at the top, type of efficient motherhood.