To many a housewife of a generation ago the idea that her time had a money value would have seemed absurd. But the modern home maker takes it quite for granted. In this day of ready-made clothing, baker's bread, and commercial canning and laundering, she is accustomed to deciding whether to spend her time on a household task or to spend the family…

In spite of all we hear about the leisure of modern women, the home maker on the farm still has plenty to do and a little over. So many demands, in fact, are made upon her time that she often has the sense of being driven by her work--of trying in vain to "catch up" with all she has to do.

A family's standard of living is usually judged by the size of its income and the ways in which it spends its money. But the amount of leisure time which the members of the family enjoy and the ways in which it uses this leisure are almost equally revealing.

There is much talk nowadays about the housewife with too much leisure. But as far as the farm woman is concerned, this is not yet a very troublesome problem. Of her the old saying still has significance: "Man works from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done."

To that convenient barometer of public opinion, "the man on the street ' the efficiency of kitchens is scarcely a matter for serious consideration. At best he greets the topic with a tolerant smile, at worst with a facetious remark. To the architect and builder the subject is less amusing; they realize vaguely that something might be done to…

In most masculine eyes — and even in some feminine — the average housewife today is a Cinderella in modern dress. The magic wand of the Industrial Revolution is supposed to have transformed her from a household drudge into a lady of leisure. On every hand the opinion is heard that she has ceased to be a "producer", that insofar as she still has a…