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This Adamistic emotion takes command at the crisis, for when human beings are suddenly faced with a new and agitating situation, primitive ideas seize them.
In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average man thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one must first consider this relation of women to food in the Adamistic Theory.
Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not, must be used wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure of our civilization. Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's time as little as it questions the quality of the home product.
But the Adamistic theory is based on the dream that women are contentedly and efficiently conducting in their flats many occupations, and longing to receive back into the life around the gas-log all those industries which in years gone by were drawn from the fireside and established as money making projects in mill or work-shop.
The Adamistic scheme seems still further to demand for its smooth working that the feminine group show self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself suited to reason out general plans. It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensive scheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can be imposed on women without consulting them.
The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food to Eve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altar of the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive side of what we eat.
The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no less certainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If an unpaid person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that the particular effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts to rout all thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give over thinking in this loose way.
Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother had become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with the hearthstone that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation accumulated accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the mind of her mate. Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory.
Mother, as she "used to do," cooks by rule of thumb; in fact, how could she do otherwise, since she must keep one eye on her approving Adam while the other eye glances at the oven. The Adamistic theory requires individualistic action, and disapproves specialization in Eve. The theory also demands economic dependence in the home builder.
Mother's labor is not her own, she lives under the truck system, so to speak. She is paid in kind for her work. Influenced by the Adamistic theory, the human animal is the only species in which sex and economic relations are closely linked, the only one in which the female depends upon the male for sustenance.
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