Stories from Everybody's Magazine Part 28

The first grand division of study is The House.

We here observe that the housewife is going to be something of a Sanitary Engineer, since she studies Chemistry, Physics, and Bacteriology in their "application to such subjects as the heating, lighting, ventilation, and plumbing of a house." It is thought that knowledge of this sort "will go a long way toward improving the health conditions of the country."

We also observe that the housewife is going to be something of an Interior Decorator, since she studies "design, color, house planning and furnis.h.i.+ng."

She also acquires some skill as Purchasing Agent, Bookkeeper, and Employer of Labor when she takes the course on Household Management and studies "the proper apportioning of income among the different lines of home expenditures, the systematizing and keeping of household accounts, and the question of domestic service."

The second grand division is Food Study and Preparation.

Here the housewife becomes, to some extent, a Diet.i.tian, studying "the chemical processes in the preparation and digestion of foods," and considering the question "how she shall secure for the family the foods best suited to the various activities of each individual."

Here, likewise, she makes a start toward being a Pure Food Expert, through a study of "physical and chemical changes induced in food products by the growth of molds, yeasts, and bacteria,"

and a start toward being a Health Officer, through a study of "bacteria in their relation to disease, sources of infection, personal and household disinfection."

Nor does she omit to acquire some of the technique of the Physical Director through a course in Physiology bearing on "digestion, storage of energy, rest, sleep, exercise, and regularity of habits."

Of course, in her work in cookery, she pays some attention to special cookery for invalids.

The third grand division, that of Clothing and Household Fabrics, produces a Dressmaker, a Milliner, and an Embroiderer, as well as a person trained to see to it that "the expenditure for clothing shall be correct in proportion to the expenditure for other purposes."

The fourth grand division, the Care of Children, is of course limitless. The rearing of the human young is, as we all know and as Mr. Eliot of Harvard has insisted, the most intellectual occupation in the world. Here the homemaker applies all the knowledge she has gained from her study of the hygiene of foods and of the hygiene of clothes, and also makes some progress toward becoming a Trained Nurse and a Kindergartner by means of researches into "infant diseases and emergencies," "the stages of the mental development of the child," "the child's imagination with regard to truth-telling and deceit," "the history of children's books," and "the art of story-telling."

Pa.s.sing over the fifth grand division, Home Nursing and Emergencies (in which the pupil learns simply "the use of household remedies," "the care of the sick-room," etc.), we come to the wide expanse of the sixth grand division, Home and Social Economics.

The work in this division begins with a study of the primitive evolution of the home and comes on down to the present time, when "the pa.s.sing of many of the former lines of woman's work into the factory has brought to many women leisure time which should be spent in social service."

Note that last fact carefully. Home Economics is no attempt to drive women back into home seclusion. On the contrary, it is an attempt to bring the home and its occupants into the scientific and sociological developments of the outside world.

For this reason, in traversing the division of Home and Social Economics, the pupil encounters "an attempt to determine problems in civic life which seem to be a part of the duties of women."

Seventhly and lastly, there is a division dedicated to Literature, in which "a systematic course in reading is carried on through the two years." Indispensable! No degree of proficiency at inserting calories in correct numbers in to Little Sally's stomach could atone for lack of skill at leading Little Sally herself in morning strolls through the "Child's Garden of Verses," with trowel in hand to dig up the gayest plants and reset them in the memory.

Which brings us back to the observation that the Consumption of Wealth is a generality.

The homemaker may happen to be a specialist in some one direction, but it is clear that she cannot simultaneously know as much about food values as the real diet.i.tian, as much about the physical care of her child as the real trained nurse, as much about the wholesomeness of her living arrangements as the real sanitarian, as much about music as the Thomas Orchestra, as much about social service as Mr. Devine, and as much about poems as Mr. Stevenson. Her peculiar equipment, if she is a good homemaker, is a round of experience and a bent of mind which make it possible for her to cooperate intelligently with the diet.i.tian, the trained nurse, the sanitarian, the Thomas Orchestra, Mr. Devine, Mr. Stevenson, and the various other representatives of the various other specialized techniques of the outside world.

It follows that her school discipline cannot be too comprehensive. No other occupation demands such breadth of sense and sensibility. One could make a perfectly good cotton manufacturer on the basis of a very narrow training. One cannot make a good consumer without a really LIBERAL EDUCATION.

For this reason it becomes necessary to resist certain narrownesses in certain phases of Home Economics.

One of these narrownesses is the a.s.sumption that because a thing happens to be close to us it is therefore important. We have heard lecturers insist that because a house contains drain-pipes a woman should learn all about drain-pipes. But why? In most communities drain-pipes are installed and repaired and in every way controlled by gentlemen who are drain-pipe specialists. The woman who lives in the house has no more real need of a knowledge of the structural mysteries of drain-pipes than a reporter has of a knowledge of the structural mysteries of his typewriting machine. The office mechanic fixes all that for him, and, so far as his efficiency as a reporter is concerned, an investigation of his faithful keyboard's internal arrangements would be in most cases an amiable waste of time.

Another possible narrowness is the attempt to manufacture "cultural backgrounds" for various important but quite safe-and-sane household tasks.

For instance, in the books and in the courses of instruction (of college grade) on "The House" we have sometimes observed elaborate accounts of the evolution of the human home, beginning with the huts of the primitive Simianians. And in pursuing the very essential subject of "Clothes and Fabrics" we have not infrequently found ourselves in the midst of s.p.a.cious preliminary dissertations on the structure of the loom, beginning with that which was used by the Anthropenguins.

Now we would not for the world speak disparagingly of looms or huts. We have ourselves examined some of them in the Hull House Museum in Chicago and in the woods of Canada, and have found them instructive. We suggest only that college life is short, that the college curriculum is crowded, and that (except possibly for those students who are especially interested in anthropology or in industrial evolution) it would surely be a misfortune to learn the Simianian hut and to miss Rossetti's "House of Life," or to get the impression that as a "cultural background" for s.h.i.+rtwaists the Anthropengruinian loom can really compete with Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus."

If this occasional tendency toward exaggerating the importance of drain-pipes, window-curtains, and door-mats were to grow strong, and if girls, as a cla.s.s, should be required to spend any large proportion of their time on the specialized history and sociology of feminine implements and tasks while the boys were still in the current of the affairs of the race, we should indeed want President Thomas of Bryn Mawr to repeat on a thousand lecture platforms her indignant a.s.sertion of the fact that "nothing more disastrous for women, or for men, can be conceived of than specialized education of women as a s.e.x."

These parenthetical observations, however, amount simply to the expression of our personal opinion that Home Economics, like every new idea, carries with it large quant.i.ties of dross which will have to be refined out in the smelter of trial. The real metal in it is its attempt to establish the principle that intelligent Consumption is an important and difficult task. For that reason it will not only desire but demand the utmost equality of educational opportunity. And women, like men, will continue to get their "cultural backgrounds" in the great achievements of the whole race, where they can hold converse with Lincoln and Darwin and the makers of the Cologne Cathedral and George Meredith and Pasteur and Karl Marx and Whistler and Joan of Arc and St. John.

The woman voiced a great truth who said that the soul which can irradiate the numberless pettinesses of home management (and it is folly to deny that there ARE numberless pettinesses in it) is the soul "nourished elsewhere." Think it over. It tells the story. Whether that "elsewhere" is the deep recesses of her own religious nature or the wide stretches of the great arts and sciences, it is always an "elsewhere."

Let that be granted, as it must be granted. Let us say that there shall be no abridgment of the offerings of so-called academic education. What does a course of study like that of Mr. Harvey's Homemakers' School attempt to add to academic education?

Princ.i.p.ally three things.

First: Certain manual arts.

Second: Certain domestic applications of the physical and sociological sciences.

Third: Money Sense in Expenditure (in the course on Household Management).

The last of these three things is appearing in many places. At the University of Illinois, for instance, Professor Kinley, now delegate from the United States to the Pan-American Congress, has given courses in Home Administration for women which he has regarded as of equal importance with his courses in Business Administration for men.

At the University of Chicago, in the Department of Household Administration, Course 44 is on "The Administration of the House"

and includes "the proper apportionment of income."

The business man says: "My sales cost, or my manufacturing cost, or my office-force cost, is such and such a per cent. of my total cost. When it goes above that, I want to know why; and I find out; and, if there isn't a mighty good reason for its going up, I make it go down again to where it was." Shall we come to the day when in spending the money which has been earned in business we shall say: "Such and such a per cent. to food; and such and such a per cent. to clothes; and such and such a per cent. to shelter; and such and such a per cent. to health and recreation; and such and such a per cent. to good works; and such and such other per cents. to various other purposes?" Shall we come to the day when we shall consume wealth with as much forethought and with as much balance of judgment between conflicting claims as we now exhibit in acquiring wealth?

They are trying to develop this "Costs System for Home Expenditures" in many of the schools and departments of Home Economics to-day. They believe that most people, because of not looking ahead and because of not making definite plans based on previous experience, come to the contemplation of their bills on the first of each month with every reason to confess that they have bought those things which they ought not to have bought and have left unbought those things which they ought to have bought.

But it is not only a matter of reaching a systematic instead of a helter-skelter enjoyment of the offerings of the world. It is also a matter of reaching, by study of money values, a mental habit of economy. And it comes at a time when that habit is needed.

We are just beginning to realize in the United States that we cannot spend all our annual earnings on living expenses and still have a surplus for fresh capital for new industrial enterprises.

We are on the point of perceiving that we are cramping and stunting the future industrial expansion of the country by our personal extravagance. We shall soon really believe Mr. James J.

Hill when he says that "every dollar unprofitably spent is a crime against posterity."

When international industrial compet.i.tion reaches its climax, that nation will have an advantage whose people feel most keenly that the wise expenditure of income is a patriotic as well as a personal duty.

But is this a matter for women alone? Do not men also consume?

Are there no vats in Milwaukee, no stills in Kentucky, no factories wrapping paper-rings around bunches of dead leaves at Tampa? Are there no men's tailors, gents' furnis.h.i.+ng shops, luncheons, clubs, banquets, athletics, celebrations? And as for home expenditures themselves, is the man simply to bring the plunder to the door, get patted on the head, and trot off in search of more plunder? We must doubt if economy will be reached by such a route. We find ourselves agreeing rather with the Home Economics lecturer who said: "There never yet was a family income really wisely expended without cooperation in all matters between husband and wife."

The Ma.s.sachusetts legislature has pa.s.sed a law looking toward the teaching of Thrift in the public schools. Boys and girls need it equally. And we venture to surmise that in so far as the new art and science of Consumption is concerned with wise spending, the bulk of its teachings ultimately will be enjoyed by both s.e.xes.

It will not be, to any great extent, a specialized education for women.

So much for the "Money Sense in Expenditure" which a full Home Economics course adds to "academic" education. The more we admit its value, the more convinced we must be that it ought to include every kind of expenditure and both kinds of human being.

A precisely similar conviction arises with regard to those "domestic applications of the physical and sociological sciences"

which a full Home Economics course adds to an "academic"

education.

Those "domestic" applications are most of them broadly "human"

applications. They bear on daily living, exercise, fresh air, personal cleanliness, diet, sleep, the avoidance of contagion, methods of fighting off disease, general physical efficiency.

They all amount to what Mrs. Ellen H. Richards calls Right Living. She would have four R's instead of three: Reading, Riting, Rithmetic, and Right Living.

Now is Right Living to be only for girls?

Mr. Eliot of Harvard does not think so. In a recent "Survey of the Needs of Education," he said: