The Women of Tomorrow Part 10

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 that over. It tells the story.

Whether the "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).

Let us review these things in reverse order.

The last of the three is showing itself in many places. At the University of Illinois, for instance, Professor Kinley, recently 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 such and such 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' furnishing 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 largely amount to what Mrs. Ellen H. Richards used to call Right Living. She wanted four R's instead of three: Reading, Riting, Rithmetic, 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:

"Public instruction in preventive medicine must be provided for all children and the hygienic method of living must be taught in all schools.... To make this new knowledge and skill a universal subject of instruction in our schools, colleges, and universities is by no means impossible--indeed, it would not even be difficult, for it is a subject full of natural history as well as social interest....

American schools of every sort ought to provide systematic instruction on public and private hygiene, diet, s.e.x hygiene, and the prevention of disease and premature death, not only because these subjects profoundly affect human affections and public happiness, but because they are of high economic importance."

It may very well be that what Mr. Eliot had in mind will not only come to pa.s.s but will even exceed his expectations. It may very well be that the educational policy of the future was correctly search-lighted by Miss Henrietta I. Goodrich (who used to direct the Boston School of Housekeeping before it was merged into Simmons College) when she said:

"We need to have courage to break the present courses in household arts and domestic science into their component parts and begin again on the much broader basis of a study of living conditions. Our plea would be this: that instruction in the facts of daily living be incorporated in the state's educational system from the primary grades through the graduate departments of the universities, with a rank equal to that of any subject that is taught, _as required work for both boys and girls_."

We revert now finally to the "manual arts" which a full course in home economics adds to an "academic" education. In this matter, just as in the matter of money sense in expenditure and in the matter of right living, we observe that the ultimate issue of the movement is not so much a specialized education for women as a practical efficiency in the common things of life for men and women both.

A reasonable proficiency in manual arts will some day be the heritage of all educated people. Mr. Eliot, in his "Survey of the Needs of Education," speaks appreciatingly of his father's having caused him to learn carpentry and wood-turning. He goes on to say:

"This I hold to be the great need of education in the United States--the devoting of a much larger proportion of the total school time to the training of the eye, ear, and hand."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE IN SERVING BREAKFASTS, DINNERS AND SUPPERS FOR A SMALL FAMILY, CLEVELAND.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GIRLS IN THE CLEVELAND TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL LEARN TO MAKE POTTERY AS WELL AS TO MAKE DESIGNS.]

It follows, then, that cooking and sewing for girls in the elementary schools must be made just as rigorous a discipline for eye and hand as wood-working is for boys. It even follows that boys and girls will often get their manual training together.

It will not be a case of "household drudgery" for the girls while the boys are studying civics.

Somewhere in this chapter the reader will find a picture of the "living room" of the "model" house of the Washington-Allston Elementary School in Boston. The boys and girls of graduating grade in that school give four hours a week to matters connected with the welfare of that house. They have furnished it throughout with their own handiwork, the girls making pillow-cases, wall-coverings, window-curtains, etc., and the boys making chairs, tables, cupboards, etc. Succeeding cla.s.ses will furnish it again. _The reason why Mr.

Crawford, the master of the school, chose to have a house for a manual training laboratory was simply that a house offers ampler opportunities than any other kind of place for instruction in the practical efficiencies of daily living for both s.e.xes._

The system will be complete when the girls get a bigger training in design by making more of the chairs, and when the boys get a bigger training in diet by doing more of the cooking.

We have now glanced at each of the three princ.i.p.al contributions made to modern education by the new study of the home. We have come to understand that much of each contribution will be for the male as well as for the female inhabitants of the home. If girls are to be led toward wisdom in the use of money, so are boys. If girls are to be habituated to the principles of Right Living, so again are boys. If girls have a need of manual training, with certain materials and implements, so boys, with perhaps other materials and implements, have a need of manual training, too.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UPPER PICTURE IS A CLa.s.s IN FOOD ADULTERATIONS IN THE HOME ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

LOWER PICTURE IS THE LIVING ROOM OF THE "MODEL" HOUSE IN THE WASHINGTON-ALLSTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, BOSTON.]

It may be that in each case, except the last, there will be an ampler body of instruction for feminine than for masculine use. But the excess will be small enough to be absorbed without interference with general education of the largest and most liberal sort. If this were not true by natural fact, it would have to be made true artificially.

The body of home economics instruction could not be suffered to defeat its own ultimate mental purpose. The study of specialized techniques could not be permitted to narrow the s.p.a.cious educational experience needed for that broadest of all generalities, the homemaker's intelligent Consumption, Enjoyment, Use of all the world's physical and spiritual commodities.

Surely we can now say with unanimous consent that Home Economics has revealed itself to be not a species of s.e.x education but a species of vocational education. We miss its inmost intent, and we divert it from its mission, if we start with saying "Let us teach girls." We have to start with saying "Let us teach Foods, Textiles, Hygiene." We then ask "Who need to know about Foods, Textiles, Hygiene?" In answer, our largest group of scholars will come from among the prospective managers of households. But we are not teaching feminine accomplishments. We are teaching human life-tasks.

Widening with this vocational principle, Miss Goodrich's vision of the inclusion of both s.e.xes in the courses of study now labeled "domestic-science-and-art" finds widening fulfilment. Side by side with young women in the Foods laboratory we shall see young men who are going to be chefs, diet.i.tians, pure-food inspectors. In the Textiles laboratory we shall see young women who are going to sew at home, young women who are going to sew in factories, young men who are going to manufacture cloth. Hygiene will attract the sanitarian, the nurse, the hotel manager, trousered or petticoated.

We come thus face to face with the final development of the home economics movement. It issues into a double system. After providing, to the young, that general introduction to life at large which we have already detailed, it goes on, in its second phase, to provide immediate information of a more specialized character to scholars more mature _at the time when that information is immediately needed_. A large part of the home economics movement of the future will be the establishment of a system of continuous instruction for wives, mothers, housekeepers, already entered upon their task of home-making and child-rearing.

The need of this development appears as soon as we take the sequence of events in a girl's life and place it beside the sequence of events in a boy's. If a boy is going to be a cotton-machinery engineer, a munic.i.p.al sanitary expert, a food specialist, we do not give him his real technical finish till he is entering his trade. We may have given him, we ought to have given him, a vocational foundation of pertinent knowledge. But we do not give him the minutiae of trade technique till he is at the point of practicing his trade or has already begun to practice it. This principle, applicable to the preparation for all trades whatsoever, sets limits to the amount of detailed preparation for home-making which can profitably be introduced, for most girls, into the curricula of schools and colleges.

In former chapters of this book we have seen that for most girls there is a gap, a large gap, between school and marriage, between girlhood and motherhood. We have seen, too, that this gap tends to be filled with money-earning work which demands a certain preparation of its own. That point aside, however, the very existence of the gap in question, no matter how it may be filled, means that if we give a minute and elaborate preparation of home-making to girlhood we may wait five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, before we see wifehood and motherhood put that preparation to use.

Anybody who proposed to give a boy a minute and elaborate preparation for civil engineering a possible twenty years before he became a civil engineer and in contempt of the possible contingency of his not becoming a civil engineer at all, would hardly deserve to be called practical. Yet, in the name of practical education, we are sometimes asked to tolerate a correspondingly complete preparation for wifehood and motherhood at an age when both of those estates are mere prospects, distant and indefinite. We cannot believe that so extreme a demand will ever be acceded to by educators who have fully considered the modern postponement of marriage. Home economics, in schools and colleges, except for girls who are going to become teachers of it or who in other ways are going to make it their immediate money-earning work, must stop with its broad applications to daily human living. So will it be useful, in different degrees, to both s.e.xes and clash neither with general academic preparation nor with the preparation for self-support.

There will remain, unlearned, a great deal that modern science and modern sociology have to offer to the wife and mother. Let that great deal, in its more technical teachings, be learned when it can be carried forward into action.

The machinery of home economics instruction for adults is even now being erected, is even now being operated.

The Chicago School of Domestic Arts and Science, after much teaching of young girls, has established a "Housekeepers' a.s.sociation." The members of that a.s.sociation are adult practicing housekeepers. The same school will soon establish a course in the study of the Care of Children. The pupils enrolled in that course will be mothers.