Household Administration Part 17

II. HOUSECRAFT

The position of modern woman towards matters domestic is somewhat undefined, and at best can hardly be considered satisfactory. Her att.i.tude towards housekeeping is not one of enthusiasm. The Lancashire mill-girl is proud to have a house of her own, but prefers her life at the mill to one spent in ordering that house; the elementary school teacher considers housekeeping of so little economic interest that she is injured if she may not devote her married life to a profession demanding the best of her energy; the university graduate pretends to a mind superior to physical comfort and welfare unless it can be produced by a creature less specialised than herself.

In the field of paid occupations for women, educated and uneducated, domestic work stands low; not necessarily low in scale of payment, but uninviting as a sphere of work and lacking the dignity of skilled employment. That good housewives may be found in every grade of society is evident, but the general trend of our social evolution demands that some organised effort shall be made to simplify actual work and to raise the appreciation of that work.

In history and philosophy, the moral advantages of a good home have been acknowledged and extolled. The physical advantages are only now being fully emphasised, and there is an ever-increasing demand that women shall diligently apply their best efforts, first to the problems of the individual household, and then beyond it to those forms of housekeeping that fall to munic.i.p.al and national control. We need a different estimate, a better realisation, of the enormous responsibility that lies in feeding, housing, and general hygienic conditions, and such a realisation must work from the top downwards in our social and intellectual strata.

In the care of the sick we have seen a complete revolution. Even so recently as the days of our grandparents "Sarah Gamp" was the general refuge--now her name is a byword. The work of nursing and the care of an invalid's room, be it home or hospital, has been raised from mere manual labour. Intellect has established formulae and dogma on which workers can be trained, and the work itself has been proved not alone a suitable means by which a woman can earn her living, but also a profession demanding a dignified respect and admiration. The researches of medical laboratories--the acc.u.mulated experience of the great physicians and surgeons of the world--are constantly placing valuable knowledge in the hands of nurses and those who train them.

Elaboration and fuss have gone in favour of a simplicity of service based on scientific facts; the influence of the trained worker has to some extent permeated the untrained service of home nursing. Great may still be our ignorance and great the need for a more adequate service, especially in the homes of the poor, but taken as a whole the care of the sick has been raised to what we may, without ambiguity, call a scientific art. Nursing may be popular from a love of such work and from its financial return, but the real strength of the nursing world lies in its organised provision of skilled women sent out to their work with a knowledge of its detail and a training in routine, paid for by service during years of apprenticeship.

The changes that have been effected in regard to the care of the sick may not form a perfect a.n.a.logy of what can be done in other forms of domestic work, but they at least const.i.tute a lesson in cause and effect, with many suggestions for the would-be reformer. Improvement in nursing owes its first impetus to a realisation of the part a nurse must of necessity play in curing or alleviating suffering, and any real improvements in our general domestic work and conditions will only be seriously considered when they are properly appreciated in their relation to the health and efficiency of the nation. To bring this home to individuals and cla.s.ses must be the work of education. Let us magnify the office of the housewife unduly rather than leave it unrecognised. We must demand something more than mere manipulative skill from the manual worker--a knowledge and interest from those who direct her work; a place in laboratories and schools for the many problems worthy of elucidation. To make lessons in housecraft a part of the curriculum of elementary and secondary schools has its own good; to make lessons in sick-nursing also a part might be good; but to leave both there would be only to patch, not mend, a rent in our social conditions. The matter must find its way into universities and research schools for its physical and economic investigation--as in other kinds of work we need an aristocracy of brains to guide the democracy of hands to found an apprenticeship system that shall provide efficient workers to bring the mighty forces of chemical, physical, and biological science to bear directly on such matters as selection of foods, methods of cooking, better apparatus for cleaning purposes, and an evolution of house-planning and furnishing that shall reduce the present elaboration of service and cleaning. It is not possible that every woman who cooks a potato shall be intimately acquainted with the structure of starch-cells or the effect of heat on those cells, nor is it likely that we shall aim at a system that makes the cooking of our food as exact as a laboratory experiment, but that thermometer, microscope, and test-tube have their own part to play is evident. The use of a disinfectant by a nurse is a scientific operation, the scope of which has only been made possible by many and careful investigations in which the specialised effort of the few has resulted in a definite formula and a handy preparation only to be used with intelligent appreciation of its purpose. She understands its use and abuse, how to adapt it to circ.u.mstances, and probably how to find a subst.i.tute for it if occasion requires.

It is much on these lines that many of the problems of kitchen and household interest must be attacked.

We need a simple and reliable cla.s.sification of foods that shall be useful to the practical cook. A quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysis of proteid or carbo-hydrate qualities of wheat, lentils, or milk may form excellent exercise for laboratory cla.s.ses, but even there it is too often taught without any relation to the a.s.similative properties of the average digestion and their consequent effect on food values. For ordinary use we want all this brought to a general outlook of the value, and comparative value, of such ordinary food as bread, oatmeal, eggs, and beef; not only as to suitable proportions in our diet and to methods of cooking, but also as a help in providing suitable subst.i.tutes for a particular commodity in time of scarcity. Beyond the inevitable victims of the Irish potato famine, many suffered quite unnecessarily for want of ability to replace the familiar potato by a possible subst.i.tute; and to-day we are little more intelligent in our catering. Quant.i.ty and quality of the potato crop must each year to some extent make itself felt on small purses, and while not dependent on this one article of diet we might often help a meagre table by a good subst.i.tute such as rice, hominy, dumplings, and an increased supply of fresh vegetables.

Subst.i.tutes for butcher's meat too often suggest the purely vegetarian dish that to most people is but a _pis aller_. To replace part or even most of the meat in a dish with a food of approximate dietetic value would generally be more acceptable. A dish of haricot beans cooked with a little minced beef is, for example, a very different dish from the vegetarian treatment of the same article. Pea-soup made with the addition of a ham or beef bone will generally win approval over its less "tasty" rival. The value of eggs and the many ways of using cheese--the possibilities of oatmeal beyond mere porridge--are all matters worth understanding; so also is the problem of our milk supply.

The fact that legislation is active in securing the hygienic conditions of the wholesale milk supply cannot excuse individual indifference to either its actual value or suitable treatment. The inferiority of skim or separated milk to "whole milk" has been so emphasised that in many places a useful article is lying as a drug in the market. That skim milk is as useful as many "stocks" and much better than water for making porridge, maigre soups, sauces, for mixing bread and scones, has yet to be appreciated, and will only be so when the true economic use of food is removed from its present haphazard position among the instinctive arts!

The constructive consistency of meat, fish, and vegetables must be clearly set out if we are to understand the effect upon them of heat.

The primary methods of cooking and the standard proportions of ingredients may already be used with an intelligence that at least puts aside the recipe book; but the research that can produce a satisfactory system of catering and cooking has yet to invade the higher education of men and women. A suggestion of the scientific treatment of domestic matters too often presumes an elaboration of work rather than a reduction of it, and yet we all realise the labour-saving and economic return that has been the result of science applied to commercial industries. There must be a definite aim to simplify housekeeping and domestic work; the conditions of life have gone that made a women find scope for _all_ her energy in administering the affairs of her house or in employing others to that end.

To the uninitiated the various culinary processes seem endless, and to arrive at a proper accomplishment of these is generally considered a matter of continuous practice. A better understanding of the matter readily shows that while many processes can only be perfected by repet.i.tion, there are even more that fall under science rather than art.

Take, for example, the principles underlying the cooking of meat by stewing. This is surely a process where manipulation is _nil_. To make pastry or bread we must have a certain practice in the manipulation to give the deftness (on which final success depends) in addition to any understanding of the principles involved; but with regard to stewing and many similar processes it should be possible to have one lesson made so explicit that the actual process was known for all time--the Irish stew of an artisan's home or the dainty entree of the "Ritz" being only an adaptation of given principles to different foods.

In order to reduce primary methods to such business-like proportions, it is necessary to consider them in their effect on different foods, having due regard to texture and to the effect of a moist or a dry heat. It would be a matter of interest to know how the established methods of cooking meat and fish all really conduce to one end, viz. to soften the fibres by steam formed from their own juices. The rules for most methods of cooking these foods lead to this a.s.sumption, though nominally based only on a means of retaining these juices in order to save a valuable part of the food. The actual part played by the liquid in which foods are cooked is possibly very small, but not to be ignored; the presence of salt in the water in which beef or potatoes is cooked makes an appreciable difference in the flavour and probably in the food value.

The relation of the fat used in frying to the food fried in it is too often quite misunderstood, and a dyspeptic patient consequently is ordered "no fried food."

To "fry in b.u.t.ter" sounds well, but it is practically impossible; to _saute_ in b.u.t.ter at a temperature allowing some of the b.u.t.ter to enter the food, is quite a valuable method of cooking; but to raise the temperature to a point at which frying can be done is to char the b.u.t.ter. To fry properly, the food should be immersed in fat so hot that the outside of meat is immediately "set." Then allow the heating of the juices inside the meat to perform the necessary cooking. The immersion of the cold food soon lowers the temperature of the fat and makes continued immersion possible. The best kind of fat for this purpose and the relative temperature at which different fats may be used needs more investigation. At present for ordinary kitchen use we have no more reliable test of temperature than to venture a bit of bread and judge by result. One thing we may accept--frying is not a greasy or rich method of cooking. The fat used is merely a means of excluding atmosphere and cooking food at a high temperature; it bears no more relation to the food itself than does the atmosphere of the oven in baking.

This question of temperatures and their relation to the kind of food, as also to the various cookery processes, needs careful handling; we want not alone a definite dogma established on a scientific basis, but we want the means to apply it brought within easy reach--reach of a limited purse and a limited intellectual capacity, for we are not all scholars.

There is no reason why a thermometer should not become part of our kitchen equipment just as readily as that old sand-gla.s.s which regulated the boiling of an egg, but, before it is the case, many other matters must fall into line. It is probable that a careful investigation of the best means of frying, boiling, stewing, &c. would effect a considerable revolution in our household pots and pans. Is it impossible to produce a pan in which a given quant.i.ty of fat or oil should be easily brought to, say, 400 Fahr., and yet be unable to exceed that temperature? It would so safeguard expense from burning that the most delightful frying medium, olive oil, would be readily used by many people.

The matter of watching, and waiting, and judging the exact minute for certain operations takes far more time than is generally supposed, and the gloom surrounding the average kitchen range increases the difficulty. The cook who understands the use of double pans for oven and range has done something to save both time and anxiety, but it is evident that much more might be done to render many cookery processes almost automatic. The science that controls the production of such commercial products as biscuits, tinned foods, pickles, and jam, and turns them out to a uniform standard, is at present remote from the household kitchen. Such scientific knowledge has been produced at a commercial value for commercial enterprise. We need _our_ problems brought into universities and colleges; into the channels where research is made public; into the laboratories of schools, where, if no wonderful result may be proclaimed, we have at least established a scientific method of approaching the work of kitchen, laundry, and storeroom. The ordinary teaching of the domestic subjects too often tends to magnify the difficulties in order to show how they may be overcome. The simplification of methods by cla.s.sification would do much, and the evolution of possible devices for saving labour would do still more, to establish a favourable view of housekeeping. What is worth doing is worth doing well; but it is "doing" unnecessarily that spells drudgery.

Our att.i.tude in considering household problems turns almost involuntarily to cooking, but the need for an intellectual grasp of matters domestic is equally potent in methods of cleaning. If the word "hygiene," which we use so glibly, were really understood and appreciated, the modern house-builder and furnisher would quickly be sent to swell the ranks of the unemployed, and we should demand construction and fittings which would minimise the problems of dust and tarnish, provide suitable storage for food, and allow cleaning to be simple, straightforward, and efficient. The advent of the vacuum cleaner is less valuable in itself than in the establishment of a new principle for dealing with dust, and one that may eventually revolutionise our house-cleaning. We need a simple appliance of equal scientific value to reduce some at least of the labour entailed in "washing-up." Pots and pans, plates and dishes may be economised in number by a careful worker, but cleaned they must be, and the average "sink" of scullery or pantry is little removed from the pristine incompleteness of its first appearance. There is, in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, a sink, evidently used by the monks of the sixteenth century, which is identical with those found in sculleries of to-day, and yet chemistry and physics have revolutionised our industries and produced all sorts of scientific methods for cleaning, lighting, and heating on a large scale. Perhaps when the same woman who takes a D.Sc. bestows some of her energy on the washing of dishes we shall get to something less primitive than washing each individual greasy plate with a mop or cloth. The only scientific treatment of "washing-up" used at present seems open to criticism, and is only suited to large establishments, but it should be possible to construct every sink with some sort of douche and general fittings suited to this work.

The question of the position of modern woman towards laundry-work seems to have resolved itself into one of income. If she can pay for the services of a steam laundry she does so. In the United Kingdom it is estimated that there are 30,000 public laundries, but we have yet to find one that can produce a list of charges within reasonable limits of a small income. In the homes that are run on incomes of 100 to 400 a-year, and where the laundry-work is done at the public laundry, the amount of "washing" must be small, or some other side of the expenditure must be seriously curtailed. Laundrying performed intelligently and under suitable conditions is neither difficult nor unpleasant. To stand over a wash-tub rubbing each article by hand; to strain every muscle emptying that tub; to dry garments on a rail across a kitchen and iron them near a blazing fire is _not_ intelligent, and can only be followed by women driven by custom to wash clothes at all. Perhaps in no section of household work are scientific methods within reach as in the laundry; the existence of the public laundry and the rivalry of different firms has produced an open market for appliances of all kinds, and the exhibition of laundry utensils, machines, &c., has become an annual event. Though many of the inventions are destined for the "power" and general scope of the public laundry, there are always a number of home appliances to be seen; many more would be adapted if there were more demand. Any real scope for these must rest in the first place with architect and house-builder. In the North of England it is usual to build a small "wash-house" to nearly every house, but the general construction of these wash-houses is such as to discourage any desire to use them.

Only cold water is provided; the boiler is arranged as a detached unit; the possibility of a drying cupboard in connection with kitchen stove or hot-water cylinder is never considered, and the economical heating of irons is generally overlooked. The use of irons heated by gas, charcoal, and methylated spirit would be more general if these were more efficiently constructed and less expensive. The provision of electricity at a cost within the reach of ordinary folk will simplify many things in laundry-work as in cooking and cleaning. Instruction is, to some extent, already available as to soaps, detergent solutions and bleaching agents. We need more appreciation of the part that may be played by the process of "steeping" and the minimum of handling with which clothes may be efficiently washed and finished. The profit and loss in the matter cannot be estimated only in labour, time, soap, and firing; the wear and tear of fabric in public laundries compared with home handling and the risk of infection involved must both be taken into account. If we make laundrying easy we do much to make a frequent change of garment possible to a section of the community inclined to economise in this direction, and we should probably make fashionable those household materials that may be consigned to a wash-tub, instead of paying a reluctant visit to the dry-cleaner--chintz, cretonne, and Bolton sheeting instead of serge, tapestry, and plush. We owe one debt of grat.i.tude to the public laundry--it has raised a section of household work to the level of a skilled industry, though as yet there seems no system of apprenticeship that turns out the "complete" laundress.

For the limits of a short paper these matters have perhaps been treated somewhat discursively, but the object has been attained if, by the few ill.u.s.trations selected, some attention has been drawn to the field of inquiry which lies open, and the urgent need for a definite application of scientific minds to problems which, amid all the advances of this progressive age, seem to lag behind. The inclusion of housecraft as part of the curriculum of elementary and secondary schools may do much to rouse interest and overcome some difficulties of cooking, &c., but to any one familiar with these cla.s.ses it is evident that their scope is very limited, if only for the reason that the teaching so often treats the work of housekeeping as an imitative art, based, for want of reliable scientific data, on rules and recipes that are practically organised tradition no more. In secondary schools, the introduction of laboratory work has opened up fresh possibilities of a more reasonable treatment of housecraft, for it is certain that, when teachers are properly equipped for their work, biology, physics, and chemistry (organic and inorganic) can be successfully taught along lines that bring within the scope of school science such matters as food and feeding, cooking and washing, fuels, heating, ventilation, and hygiene.

To teach chemistry and physics in the usual academic manner and then tack on a course of cookery and laundry-work at the end of school life cannot possibly be of the same value as the co-ordinated courses; we want scientific method even more than "science" for these schools girls, who shall so soon be the housekeepers and home-makers. We may say with Stevenson, "A dogma learned is only a new error--the old was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession." For those girls who pa.s.s on to a university or technical school we want an intelligence alert to all that may lie in further investigation of those problems suggested at school.

A certain jealousy may be pardoned that the possible evolution of housekeeping may be the work of women; the leaders of the "woman's movement" have so often spoiled their work by following the lines of men's activities and aiming at a goal essentially masculine. The things that go to housekeeping seem so intimately connected with motherhood and mothering that it must be hoped our most able women will bring their intelligence, their education, and their sense of national responsibility to the task of housekeeping--to the simplification of its problems, the reduction of the labour involved, and the organisation of the paid service. There is certainly scope for master-minds.

We touched on the organisation of the nursing service. If it is possible to duly care for the sick and at the same time train an efficient nurse, it is surely possible to provide proper service in the huge caravanseries of our modern life, and at the same time provide a suitable apprenticeship for the domestic worker. Good instruction at school, followed by one or two years of definite training in a hostel or boarding-house, should produce a cla.s.s of skilled women workers who can be organised and employed on the same lines as those of the nursing service.

In many branches of labour the women are ousting the men; unless we can make good the present breach in our home bulwark and train our army of defence, we may find men ousting women in their own particular sphere.

America and Canada, realising that their coveted nationality must be founded on homes, have brought into their universities the "science of home affairs." England, in spite of the warning note sounded by inquiries into physical deterioration, infant mortality, and kindred evils, has been content with a _tradition_ of good homes, and has so far done little more than provide a smattering of cookery lessons for elementary school girls.

There is, however, a promise of better things. One university college has made a venture into home science, and other universities would soon be at work if the necessary money could be secured. Oh, for some silver-tongued evangelist to cry in the ears of our philanthropic millionaires all that might be done for this country by bringing its _best_ brains to consider the material things that go to the making of a good home!

THE END