The American Country Girl Part 12

Seeing all this clearly, it is not strange that the young woman decides to relegate the bad kitchen to the limbo of broken and disused furniture. This, to her, is the impossible kitchen: one that has no shelves, drawers, or cupboards, and no place where things can be put away; or if there are any shelves, they are made so wide that things have to be stored in behind each other so that the first row must be taken out in order to get at something behind. In this impossible kitchen the pantry is on the wrong side for the worker. By the arrangement of doors and windows light and air are shut out. The rotten old wooden sink is bad smelling, too low, and too narrow, and it is so far from the pantry that the worker will have to go back and forth ten times as many times to do a piece of work as she would if the articles were conveniently placed. The room is too large; there is many times as much walking as is necessary; it is as far removed as it possibly can be from the compact convenience of the ideal kitchen. The floor is uneven and there are broken splinters where the wood has worn. They catch the dust, and little bits of string drag along from them to catch more dust and dirt. It is impossible that this floor should ever be clean; the very thought of it is discouraging. The water must be brought from an outside well, and the wood from an outdoors wood-pile. If it is a rainy day, the wood is wet and takes a long time to get to burning in the range. It is not a range--it is only a stove and a poor one at that.

There are many other things that might be said about the impossible kitchen, but perhaps it is not necessary to go any further, for has not everybody seen one? The great majority of kitchens are now impossible.

The great majority should be torn out before any more machinery is bought for the farm business, and a full kitchen equipment should be installed in the place of the worn-out floors, the ill-adapted furniture, the cracked and rusted hardware, the soaked and disease-laden woodwork, and the leaky pipes and shingles.

When the daughter in the country home sees that the father and mother are working together for one end, that they have for the good of all undertaken a task that is too great for them, and that they are oppressed and almost despairing in their fight against untoward circ.u.mstances, she is ready to join in the struggle and to give her sometimes slender strength to help in the lifting; but when it becomes evident that the old unsanitary kitchen of the average farm home could be renovated and made the workshop of joyous efficiency instead of the treadmill of despairing burden-bearing; and when at the same time she sees additions constantly made to the greater efficiency of the farming side of the farmstead business, the daughter feels with the mother that their work does not have the appreciation that it deserves. And this is what puts the one little drop of bitterness into the cup she has to drink. There is nothing like this to take the tuck out of one. To know that there exist means to reduce the time limit for a certain piece of work from four hours to twenty minutes and that these means are stubbornly and constantly denied to the worker, takes the poetry and the hope out of her heart and the buoyancy out of her joints more than anything else could. Especially is this the effect when the chains are being hung in the new barn to swing the feed along the pa.s.sageway to every stall, all to save the strength of the men's arms, and no chains and pulleys are being strung in the kitchen to lift pails and swing loads for the mother and sister. To know that the time spent in dishwashing for a family of five could be reduced from six hours distributed through two days to forty-two minutes at one time in one morning--and then to have to go on interminably giving three separate hours daily to this loathsome, lukewarm, greasy, unsanitary, ill-a.s.sorted, deadening task--no, the next group of household administrators will not do that!

It is not that the younger women are lazy and inclined to shirk the heavy tasks. That is not their spirit. But they cannot keep up their fine buoyancy of mind and heart when better methods are constantly going into the barn and none into the house; when appliances are bought for cattle and none for the women. And they know that life will not be held up to its high level if they cannot command buoyancy of spirit.

Life is framed on a larger pattern nowadays; there is a greater demand for standard; there is a higher degree of intelligence required. All this the new young woman sees that she has to do and be. She springs to meet the situation--but hanging at her heels is a chain, the chain of old-fashioned methods. She must be free of this chain, or she will not sustain the burden of country life in the time to come. She thinks she sees a way out in the industrial opportunity of the town. It is a mirage--but she follows it. She follows it and follows it--and what is the end to be? Would it not pay us to give her the opportunity to put the housekeeping for the next generation of home-makers on a better foundation and thus keep these finest of the girls of the nation in the environment they love but now find unendurable because they cannot under present conditions have the help they need?

The papers and periodicals for women nowadays devote long columns to telling us how to make some kind of contraption that will take the place of a fireless cooker or of a movable tray or of some other new housekeeping device. It is true that woman may use her ingenuity to make something that will "do."

But we have been too long getting on with half-measures, makeshifts, contraptions of all sorts. The star we should now hitch our wagon to is an electric motor. The young woman who wishes to live on the farm would better enter some industrial field, make something commercially and with efficiency, sell it, and find in her hands the fifteen dollars for the fireless, the eleven for the double-decker wheeled-tray, and pretty soon the larger sum that will be needed to install a perfect kitchen, that will not only be a joy to herself but will be a lesson to her whole community, that will lift the whole region into a new realization of life, that will show how the time necessary to be spent on the drudgery of the household may be reduced from eighteen hours a day to two, and so release her energies as to give to the higher needs of the family and to the equally great needs of the community the services that she alone is fitted to give, and that are absolutely necessary to the well-being and the safeguarding of the life of the rural realm and therefore also of the whole people.

How can we get a kitchen like that? Well, that is the Gordian knot that the farm daughters will be able to cut. They can do it--they must do it.

Every instinct of patriotism, every breathing of pa.s.sion for the welfare of the future homes, every thought of affection for the home circle that will be theirs, calls for the most valiant struggle to gain the goal--a perfectly hygienic, perfectly fitted household plant, with all in it that can by scientific mechanism be placed there, to be the perfect working basis for that highest product, human happiness in a human home.

CHAPTER XIII

EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION

Scientific management is the application of the conservation principle to production.

The time, health and vitality of our people are as well worth conserving, at least, as our forests, minerals, and lands.

When we get efficiency in all our industries and commercial ventures, national efficiency will be a fact.

_Theodore Roosevelt._

CHAPTER XIII

EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION

If the Country Girl of the future takes her life in her hands and asks for a household laboratory such as has been described, she must make sure also that she will be able to work in that place in such a way as to get the most good out of it and to prove its value to those that have installed it for her. This presupposes a high degree of efficiency in herself as well as in the tools she handles.

Never has young womanhood been so fortunate in opportunities for preparation as is the girl of this day. The very minutes seem to bristle with the word "efficiency." On every side she may receive suggestion and instruction as to how to make herself consonant with her era. Scientific management is being carried out in every sort of factory, workshop, studio, regiment,--everywhere,--with the one exception, perhaps, of her own, the household workshop. Therefore it is for her to see what scientific management means to all these other inst.i.tutions and to apply the lesson to her own realm, and make that factory of hers, that workshop, regiment, and studio, into the most efficient place upon earth!

The great movement in the interest of efficiency has its origin in the desire to get just as much result as possible out of the labor of the workers. Their strength must be conserved, not because of any philanthropic feeling for the man, but because that strength is needed for further use, in order that a greater output of the product may be gained. The method employed is to consider studiously the movements made in carrying on any one part of the work. They separate this operation into its elements, and then they determine upon the best motions to make to accomplish the end, and upon the exact order of those motions, shaving off a part of a second here and there by the careful choosing of motions and the surest order of them. The motions the workman makes, whether with eyes, fingers or arms, are thus economized. The bricks for the building up of the wall are conveniently placed, and all the details in following any pattern are fitted together so as to make as few motions as possible, to use as little energy as possible, and to reach the end as quickly as possible. This is, says one, "the application of the conservation principle to production." "The art of management," says another of these experts, "is knowing exactly what you want the men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way." In order to accomplish all this in, say, the business and work of a factory, there must be an efficiency engineer, who shall spend days and weeks and months in finding out what the right order of motions is, what the best arrangement of the tools and materials shall be, what elimination of unnecessary acts and things can be made in order that every possible waste of energy may be pared off and the path to the end may be absolutely, sternly direct. Then there is the route clerk, who sees that this order is followed by each man until he is able to do it involuntarily and as if by instinct. To make definite record of the success of this work, the time-and-cost clerk will keep track of time and per cent. items, and make known exactly what are the results of doing things in one particular way. If not satisfactory, another way must be chosen.

It is the belief of the advocates of scientific management that if we thus make the individual efficient, his productive capacity will be raised twenty-five or fifty per cent., or even sometimes doubled.

Scientific management calls for a careful study of the surroundings. The appliances must be adequate, comfortable, handy, and such as require the least percentage of rest. The scaffold or bench must be the exact height to make as little strain as possible on the worker. The table must be made at the right height so that the worker will not have to stoop over for his tools. If he works on his feet, there must be something for him to stand against so that he may have no fear of falling. To get the full output, the right appliances must be devised, standardized, used, and maintained. The worker's clothing must not be ill-fitting, or it may restrict the movement of his arms and hands. It must be of such material that he will not be in constant fear of ruining it. Everything about him must be such as to increase speed and not restrict motion. Nothing that will affect the eyesight unpleasantly is to be tolerated. There shall be no reflecting surfaces from which the light may shine into the eyes. The colors that will help the eyes are to be selected for the room, those that are pleasant, that will induce a happy mood and will therefore decrease irritation and help the spirit of energy. He must take up the nearest tools first; the pockets and containers to hold tools must be placed so that the least and shortest motions may be made in handling them. And so on.

There are several reasons why the work of the kitchen has not been more promptly attacked by the believer in scientific management. In the first place, the business of the home laboratory is of so complex a nature that no factory can compare with it in difficulty of a.n.a.lysis. Efficient housekeeping is a combination of many factories. The scientific expert can far more easily separate the making of a single pair of shoes into its forty-three acts than he can a.n.a.lyze any one of the processes of the home laboratory: say, for instance, the making of a frosted layer-cake, the a.s.sembling and concocting of a mince-pie, or the infinitely complex business of washing dishes.

In the second place, men have been fairly busy putting this matter through in their factories. They have naturally studied out the processes nearest to their own hands. They are not to be specially blamed for inattention to the woman's realm. That will come next. Now that their attention is being called to the need for expert management in the other department of life, they are recommending in many books and lectures what should and must be done to put housekeeping on a basis for efficiency. So if women do not standardize their work, men will do it for them, and that will not be so well for them as if they did it themselves.

The woman who is administrator in the farm home must be equal to several women. She must be master in the difficult art of cookery, adapting her menu to the welfare of a group of people of all ages and with all kinds of needs. She must be washwoman and laundry woman, cleaning and scrub woman. She must know all the proper chemicals to be applied to the cleansing of different kinds of metal, cloth, wood, and every sort of surface painted and unpainted. She must be food expert, and textile expert, medicine and poison expert. Besides all this, she must be teacher, instructor, and entertainer, the encyclopedia and gazetteer, a theological and philosophical professor. And all these separate functions must do their work together within the one personality, the administrator, the little mother of the home, the companion of the kitchen, the parlor and the bedside.

Translated into technical engineering language this women in the heart of the farmstead is her own route-clerk, and order-of-work clerk; she is her own instruction-card clerk, time-and-cost clerk, gang boss, speed boss, repair boss, and inspector. All these and much more must she be in order to gain the effects of scientific management in that factory which is her home realm.

Theodore Roosevelt said, "When we get efficiency in all our industries and commercial ventures, national efficiency will be a fact." Does he include the farm laboratory among the "industries"? The farm home is producing (or ought to produce) the most valuable product that can be found in the country--the man and woman of the future. If these men and women are to be efficient, the home from which they are to come must certainly be a model of efficiency. We have to pierce through the crust of our national conceit and find there the truth that our people are painfully in need of more efficiency and that therefore it is a matter of the most vital concern that we should put the home in all its phases into a condition more adapted for producing the perfectly efficient human product.

The Gospel of Efficiency has reached the farmer; he finds that with three men he can do the work that fifteen men did forty years ago. He realizes that the efficient farmer progresses, the inefficient falls behind.

Will not the same thing be true of woman in the farmstead?

To see how the principle of efficiency may be applied in the work of the farmstead, we have but to look, for instance, at that task of dish washing. Suppose that the worker were piling the dishes at the right of the dishpan and also trying to drain them at the same side. The efficiency expert would promptly decide that this arrangement would cause a waste of time and energy, for while the right hand was ready to lift the dishes to be washed into the pan, the left would have to move back and forth in many unnecessary motions to put the dishes back into the draining rack which was also on the right. The efficiency clerk would demand that the dishes be drained at the left. If there were some article of furniture at the right, so that the dishes could not be placed there, say a pump or a door or a cupboard, that would have to be removed. If the time and strength and nervous energy of those workers were to be conserved and the product to be put forth with the least expenditure of mind and nerve, such changes would have to be made as would make labor-saving motions possible. Not to make the changes would be bad policy, because these conditions would be constantly causing waste of time and strength; and that time and that strength would be of pecuniary worth to the business. What business? The important business of administering the affairs of the home!

Every Country Girl should experiment to see how she can economize motions and save time. She should make a study of every part of her work and see where she can by forethought cut down useless movements and intensify energy. If at first she finds difficulty, she should persevere; she will master the task in time. There is a knack about it that she must master before she can become adept.

If, for instance the hair is being done up in a new way, it takes a longer time than usual the first day, less time the next, and after a few more days the new way takes no longer than the old. Some natural motions have been found out that economize the time and effort, that introduce convenient moves, that shake off awkwardnesses, and set the whole into a rhythm of motion.

Josephine Preston Peabody has written a lovely poem about a child watching her mother as she braids her hair. The child is delighted with the deftness of her mother's hands, and with the perfect rightness of the braids as every loop comes into its place and all of them are so quickly and so beautifully fitted about the head. That mother had by long practise found the exactly right way to manage that complicated piece of human industry, the "doing up" of a ma.s.s of long and wavy hair.

She did it almost without thought. Her "motions" were perfectly smooth, exquisitely graceful, and adapted absolutely to the end desired through a series of separate acts composing all together a whole scientific process. And she was so accustomed to it as a whole and to all the separate details, that she could do it with a rhythm that was like music. When it was done she could give one little final pat and say, "There!" with a slight thrill of delight.

Just so should it be with any of the intricate operations of the household laboratory. Just such a thrill of delight should be possible when the complicated piece of hand-work and machine-work called washing the dishes is finished. At the end one should be able to express a delighted "There!"--not because a dreaded and abhorrent quarter-of-an-hour was over, but because a piece of work necessary to human welfare has been turned off with firm conclusiveness and dispatch.

The inefficient way of doing things is a too frequent experience. A farm housekeeper will bring a dish of cold potatoes from the kitchen, carry it all the way through the dining-room, set it down on a chair while she opens the door to the cellar, carry it haltingly down the stairs, and then set it down on a box because it is too dark to place it in the cupboard where it belongs. She does not want to take the pains to get a lamp, but she has to. She carefully lights the lamp, carries it down the cellar stairs, places it in a safe place, and then takes care of the potatoes. Then she comes back and carries a little plate of bacon that has been left and deposits it in the same careful way. Then follow the bread, the milk and the cream in pitchers; follow the cake, the jam, and many other things in little precious bits too good to be thrown away, all requiring a careful pa.s.sage, each one at a time. It is good that she has so many beautiful and promising things to put away; but how different it would have been if she had been able to load all these things on the dummy and with one stroke of the arm to move it all downstairs. Then, O joy! if she had had the electric light to turn on in the cellar-way and down in the cellar cupboard, she could have gone downstairs with perfect safety and without fear, and she could have returned with a light heart, swung the wheeled tray into its place, and all would have been over in three minutes at the most, instead of taking twenty-five and being accomplished only by a vast expenditure of effort and nervous fear. The money that woman wasted in reduced energy and nervousness causing doctor's bills, would have bought her a wheeled tray, put in a dummy with pulley, rope, and weights, and paid the family doctor's bill besides! Nothing can be done hygienically that is done in the dark.

The Country Girl may practise for efficiency while she is waiting for her perfect kitchen to materialize, by doing all in her power to make herself save steps. To learn to make no useless pa.s.sages across the floor is to begin a conquest of one's own mind, to establish self-control, and to utilize forethought.

"Think twice and step once," was a good motto. There is a one best way to do all things. Why not search for it?

CHAPTER XIV

AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE

Ill Housewifery p.r.i.c.keth herself up with pride; Good Housewifery tricketh her house as a bride.

Ill Housewifery lieth till ten of the clock; Good Housewifery trieth to rise with the c.o.c.k.

_Penny Magazine_, 1798.