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LIBRARY

OF THB

University of California.

Class

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HOME PROBLEMS FROM A
NEW STANDPOINT

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HOME PROBLEMS

from

A NEW STANDPOINT

By CAROLINE L. HUNT

WHITCOMB & BARROWS

BOSTON 1908

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UBBAHtAS

'S fUtiO

COPYKIGHT 1908
BY

CAROLINE L. HUNT

PRESS WORK BT ALPRBD MUDOB & SON INC.

COMPOSITION AND BLBCTROTTPING ST

THOMAS TODD

14 BBACON STRBBT, BOSTON, MASS.

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To H. C. H. and A. G. H.

214S23

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* ■^' Of

:V)

INTRODUCTORY

^^/^IVEN a number of human beings,
vJT with a certain development of phys-
ical and mental faculties and of social re-
sources, how can they best utilize these
powers for the attainment of the most com-
plete satisfaction?" Thus J. A. Hobson
states what he calls The Social Problem,
adding that if "complete satisfaction" seems
too indefinite, owing to the various interpre-
tations of which it is capable, we may adopt
Ruskin's words and say that the end to be
sought is "the largest number of healthy
and happy human beings." It is as a factor
in the Social Problem, thus broadly stated in
terms of human life, that this series of
papers will consider The Home.

There was a time when the home could
hardly have been said to be a factor in the
Social Problem. It had a problem of its
own, to be sure, that of the proper manage-
ment of its internal affairs, and upon the
wisdom of that management the welfare of

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viu HOME PROBLEMS

society was largely dependent. This prob-
lem, however, was not greatly affected by
conditions in the world at large. The home
was independent industrially and in no way
involved in the general labor problem. Its
women members were not tempted to pre-
pare themselves for and to enter upon occu-
pations unconnected with its administration
and welfare ; the question whether a woman
could have a career and a home had not
then arisen. The home was at that time in-
dependent also of public work, looking to
city or village boards for assistance neither
in maintaining cleanliness nor in warding
off disease.

Now all has changed. The home, by
consenting to use factory products and by
employing outside help, has involved itself
in the great labor problem; by educating
its daughters to support themselves in occu-
pations unconnected with its management
it has complicated its original problem of
household administration ; by entrusting
the education of its little children to schools,
the care of its sick to hospitals, the protec-
tion of its water supply, and other impor-

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INTRODUCTORY ix

tant interests, to town councils or to village
boards, it has entered into public affairs.
It has brought to itself new problems and
to women and to men new responsibili-
ties, new opportunities, and new privileges.
These new responsibilities, opportunities,
and privileges will be considered in the
pages that follow.

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CONTENTS

I More Life for Woman
II More Life for Man

III More Life for the Household

Employee . . .

IV More Physical Vigor for All
V More Joy in Mere Living .

VI More Beauty for All .

VII More Pleasure for the Producer
OF Household Stuff

VIII More Conscience for the

Consumer . . .

IX New Work for the Home •

33
SI

119
'35

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MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN

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HOME PROBLEMS FROM A
NEW STANDPOINT

MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN

MORE life for woman — not only in
length through increase of years,
but also in breadth through increase in
joyful, satisfactory, well-directed activity.
A person is prompted to activity by cer-
tain instincts or desires. It is common to
divide these desires into two classes — the
self-regarding and the other- regarding.
Among those of the first class are the
desires for nutrition, for parenthood, for
intellectual activity, and for creating objects
of utility and beauty. Among those of
the second class are love and sympathy.
It is common, also, to divide the activities
prompted by the desires into selfish and
unselfish on the ground that some are of
value to him alone who engages in them,
and some are of value to others only. The
latter division, however, is not rational, for

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4 HOME PROBLEMS

it is easy to show of any act, that if it is
of benefit to the doer it must be to others
also, and vice versa. Eating, for example,
is prompted by a desire that is entirely
self-regarding, but if we did not eat we
could not work for others.

Although there is no reason for a classifi-
cation of activities based upon the recipient
of the benefit, there is a reason for a divi-
sion based upon the way in which the
advantage comes to the doer or to others.
The self-regarding instincts inspire one to
acts which lead directly to the enrichment
of his own life and only indirectly, and by
way of his increased power through activ-
ity and consequent increased capacity for
service, to the welfare of others. By such
acts he preserves his life, promotes his
health, acquires knowledge, and cultivates
talents in whose expression he finds pleas-
ure. The other- regarding instincts lead one
to activities which tend directly to the wel-
fare of others, and only by a circuitous
route and by way of the benefit conferred
upon others, to the enrichment of his own
life. By such activities he sacrifices or en-

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MORE LIFE. FOR WOMAN 5

dangers his life that others may live, he
gives up health for the health of others,
imparts knowledge at the expense of limit-
ing his own store of information, and leads
others to the satisfaction of expressing their
talents by sacrificing the cultivation and
exercise of his peculiar gifts.

Success in either form of activity is de-
pendent upon activity of the other kind.
The man who teaches successfully finds that
he at the same time systematizes his own
knowledge, makes it available for his own
purposes, and prepares himself for further
learning. The woman who would have
strong children seeks to increase her own
physical vigor, and thus by work for others
she secures the joys of health for herself.

On the other hand, activity of one kind,
at the expense of the other, tends not only
to unbalance, but to narrow life. The
mother who blindly performs unnecessary
services for her child, and thus curtails her
time for reading and study, runs the risk of
becoming incapable of directing wisely the
education of the child in later life. She not
only unbalances her life by too much serv-

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6 HOME PROBLEMS

ing, but also narrows it by reducing her
chances for continued usefulness.

Breadth of life is dependent upon an
equilibrium between the activities prompted
by the self-regarding and those prompted by
the other-regarding desires.

The wish to find expression for peculiar
talents is self-regarding. Occupations suited
to talent, however, lead not only to pleasure
in work, but to development and to in-
creased power for usefulness ; and wl)ile the
interests of the well-balanced life may at
any time demand the sacrifice of talents for
the sake of work for others, those same in-
terests demand just as imperiously that
talents must not be unnecessarily sacrificed
for the sake of purposeless serving.

Upon woman's opportunities for inten-^
sive cultivation of special talents, Nature
has set a limitation by specializing her for
childbearing. This limitation is probably
not nearly so great as education and un-
healthful living make it appear, but it does
exist. Considered alone, it seems an un-
qualified disadvantage. Considered in con-
nection with the fact that it brings the joys

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MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN 7

of motherhood and of usefulness to society,
it appears to be a means for rounding out
and broadening her life.

To this limitation set by Nature to
woman's chances for individualizing her-
self, society has added another check by
specializing her for housekeeping. Does
this tend to unbalance and narrow her life,
or to balance and broaden it? The answer
to this question depends, first, upon whether
she has talents which do not find expression
in housekeeping; second, upon whether her
specialization for housekeeping interferes
with their use; and third, if it does inter-
fere, upon whether the interference brings
with it a compensating advantage.

First, have women talents which do not
find expression in housekeeping? That is
easily answered. Women are successfully
practicing medicine, nursing, teaching, and
working at the various crafts. Society is
showing its appreciation of their work by
offering them employment in these various
occupations.

Second, does housekeeping impose a lim-
itation upon the use of these special talents,

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8 HOME PROBLEMS

independent of the limitation imposed by
childbearing? In answering this it is con-
venient to suppose a woman's life to be
divided into three equal periods. If she
be granted threescore and ten years of life,
each period would be about twenty-three
years long. The first period in all women
is, or should be, given chiefly to education
and preparation for life. The second, in
the case of women who marry and have
children, is given chiefly to maternal cares.
The third is comparatively free.

During the first period there is no bent
which can be given to education for the
sake of preparing a woman for motherhood
that does not prepare her for life itself.
Study of food, hygiene, psychology, all are
useful in any form of life. Not so, however,
with the bent that is given to woman's
education because of her specialization for
housekeeping. In manual training, for ex-
ample, except in the most progressive of
schools, her work is confined to cooking and
sewing. This prevents her from finding
out whether she has talents for work in
wood and metal or for engineering, thus

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MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN 9

defeating one of the first purposes of edu-
cation, the exploration and discovery of
talents. This means a waste of time in early
life and frequently a failure to find a life
work suited to her natural endowment. If
she does not marry, it offers an unnecessary
handicap to her in business or professional
life. If she does marry, it brings her to the
period when childbearing imposes its neces-
sary limitation, not so well prepared as she
might be for carrying on her special work
in hours of leisure. The same thing could
be said of the bent given to the more theo-
retical parts of woman's education, for the
purpose of preparing her for housekeeping.
During the second period, housekeeping
adds its check to that imposed by the care
of children. Ask a woman why she does
not work at her specialty and she is quite
as likely to say, "Because I cannot get good
help in my kitchen," as "Because the care
of my children interferes." If it were not
for housekeeping, she might give the time
now spent in this employment to reading
the literature of her chosen subject, and
oftentimes to active work in her trade or

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lO HOME PROBLEMS

profession — to office practice, if a doctor;
to private classes, if a teacher. If she had
chosen a craft, her work would be practi-
cally uninterrupted, for it could be carried
on at home.

During the third period, housekeeping
imposes two limitations, one directly and
the other in the form of an inefficiency pro-
jected from the second period because of
disuse of her talents. It is during this time
that the sacrifice of woman's talents for the
sake of housekeeping is most apparent. She
is free from the care of young children, and
if she were not handicapped by inexperi-
ence could enrich her own life and add to
her usefulness by systematic work in her
own line.

Housekeeping, then, does provide a check
upon the development of woman's individ-
uality through the use of special powers, a
check which extends over all her life and
is independent of that imposed by child-
bearing.

Finally, is this check necessary to the
well-balanced life? This must be deter-

mined for individual cases. [In trying to

lust
lin

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MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN II

answer the question, we must keep in mind
that whenever an activity is necessary to the
realization of the ideal of home, it is nec-
essary to the complete life, whether it in-
volves the sacrifice of talents or not; when
it is not so necessary and does not provide
an outlet for special talents, it is an unjusti-
fiable waste of woman's life and of society's
resourcesr]7

That which is necessary for good home-
making can be determined only by holding
fast to the highest ideal of home and by
having a clear understanding of changing
social conditions. The ideal never changes ;
the best home-making must always be an
intelligent, affectionate effort to help others
to attain as nearly as possible to complete-
ness of life by securing for them those es-
sentials of good living which they cannot
obtain in other ways as well or better ; but
while the ideal remains always the same,
the means by which it must be realized
undergo constant change. Once it was nec-
essary for a woman to make candles or to
leave her husband and children in darkness.
That time passed, for husband and children

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12 HOME PROBLEMS

found a better light than that of homemade
candles. And yet the woman continued her
candle-making for a long period. She has
done this with most of the varied activities
of housekeeping, continuing them long after
they had become only an obstacle in the
way-of her own independent development.
[The reason for this useless clinging to
oCtgrown activities is to be found in our
conception of the purposes of housekeeping.
We have thought of its multiple activities
as the ends toward which the talents of all
women should be bent, no matter how diffi-
cult or how wasteful the bending process.
A frank recognition of the varied character
of women's talents and of society's need for
the full and free exercise of these talents,
and an appreciation also of the value of
good home-making, not only to the world
at large, but to women themselves as a
means of rounding out and balancing their
lives, will lead to a different conception.
A special trade, craft, profession, business,
or form of public work will seem the end
toward which the peculiar talent of a given
woman should be directed, while house-

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MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN 1 3

keeping will appear, not as an end in itself,
but as a means, the means which at a given
stage of industrial development all women
may find it necessary to employ if they
would give expression to their love by
making homes.

In this spirit of double appreciation we
see that when the home-maker continues
one of the activities of housekeeping after
it has become unnecessary to good home-
making, she unbalances her life by over-
serving; that when she sacrifices home for
the sake of a "career," she destroys the equi-
librium of her life by failing to find expres-
sion for the other-regarding desires. In this
spirit alone can we view the changes which
are going on in society, and separate those
which tend to narrow and impoverish
woman's life from those which tend to
broaden and enrich it.

Looking in this spirit, we see an advan-
tage in boarding-house life because it re-
duces the amount of work necessary for
cooking and serving food. We see another
advantage in the reduction of the amount
of superintendence when compared with

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14 HOME PROBLEMS

the amount of work done. Housekeepers
today are being nerve-racked by an amount
of superintendence out of all proportion to
the labor necessary for housekeeping. On
the other hand, we see disadvantages in this
kind of life because it is incompatible with
the retirement that is necessary for mutual
helpfulness, for successful child training,
and for good fellowship. The adoption of
a scientific and up-to-date modification of
the "lodgings" system in vogue in England,
or some other plan of professional catering
for private families, might be the means of
preserving the good in boarding-house life
without perpetuating the evil.

We see in the increase of prepared foods
upon the market a saving of labor but a
menace to health. Women's clubs, made
possible partly because of the saving of time
through the use of these foods, are largely
responsible for the pure food laws that have
been passed, and we are looking to them for
an educational campaign which will result
in further legislation and a better enforce-
ment of present laws.

In the movement toward economic inde-

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MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN 1 5

pendence for woman, we see advantages and
disadvantages. When it leads her to sacri-
fice home and motherhood and the oppor-
tunity to do work in which her soul delights
rather than to be economically dependent,
it enslaves her and her talents, for economic
independence is worthless unless it brings
expressional freedom; when it brings her
the opportunity to do the work she loves
and can do best, it frees her and her powers.
AVe see in the revival of handicraft tre-
mendous significance to woman, because it
opens up to her a great field of industries
which offer activities for both hand and
brain, and which can be carried on at home
without interfering with the care of chil-
dren. We see why it was necessary for the
handicrafts to fall into disuse while we were
working out the system of division of labor,
which now, upon their revival, makes it
possible for women to become more than
mere amateurs in them. These and many
other interesting movements we see in soci-
ety, if we have our eyes open, both to the
value of woman as a home-maker and to
her value as an individual.

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1 6 HOME PROBLEMS

More life for woman — not through sac-
rifice of the joys of motherhood and home-
making, but by the addition of the pleasures
in satisfactory cultivation of special talents
to the privileges of service.

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN

THE changes which are enlarging
woman's educational privileges and
are giving to her an opportunity to prepare
herself for work not directly connected with
the home, and which by simplifying house-
keeping methods are making it possible for
her to carry on such work in connection
with home-making, may be said to be bring-
ing more life to man, providing we under-
stand the word life in its broad and not in
its narrow sense, and providing we mean by
man no particular individual nor class of
individuals, but composite man.

The individual man may be inclined to
dispute this statement If so, it is probably
because of one of two facts. Either he does
not see life whole, and thinks only of what
he has lost by woman's progress and not of
what he has gained, or he forgets that he is
only a small part of composite man, and,
as such, may fall below the average with
respect to his joy in living.

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20 HOME PROBLEMS

If he likes homemade bread and is com-
pelled to eat baker's bread because his wife
likes to study Dante better than to cook, he
may think that he is not so well off as he
would have been if he had lived a half cen-
tury ago, when Dante classes for women and
baker's bread were practically unknown.
But if he considers the advantages of eating
his supper under the eaves, as it were, of the
Dante class, and of having his baker's bread
flavored with drippings of information con-
cerning the great poet and his times, he may
conclude that baker's bread with Dante
sauce is more to him than homemade bread
without it.

Or it may be that his doubt of the state-
ment is due to the fact that his quota of life
is below the average. Perhaps his wife goes
off to her class and does not bring back to
him the information and inspiration which
she has received. If so, the trouble is not
with the times, but with human nature.
Selfishness always has existed and always
will exist. If a man has a selfish wife, the
only thing he can do to assure himself that
men are really better off than they used to

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN 21

be is to look abroad and to see if, for every
one like himself, there are not two others
who are profiting by woman's broadened
life and who bring up the average of life
for modern man above that of his middle-
of-the-nineteenth-century brother.

To live, what is it? To be healthy, to ^-^
enjoy the pleasures of the senses, to taste ^
good tastes, to hear sweet sounds, to see
beautiful sights, to learn, to do (if we object
to the word "work" because it is sometimes ^
applied to drudgery), and to love. The
last is most important of all. It modifies
all the rest, and they at times must be sacri-
ficed to it. It is interpreted by all the rest,
for only by knowing what we consider real
life for ourselves can we know what our
love should seek for others.

Taking the desire to love first, woman's "^
expanding life is making possible for man
the expression of an ever better and higher
form of affection. To see how this comes
about, we must read the present in the light
of the past.

- There was a time when man's work as
well as woman's was almost all directly con-

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22 HOME PROBLEMS

nected with the home. He raised wheat,
kept cows, pigs, and chickens, hewed timber,
built his own house and barn, and gathered
his own fuel, while she spun, dyed, wove,
sewed, cooked, and cared for the house.
Neither was then a specialist. Then came
division of labor, which, however, affected
man's work more than woman's. This made
it possible for him to become a farmer, a
carpenter, or a coal merchant, and to pro-
vide for the needs of his home by the fruits
of his specialized labor instead of by direct
labor, as he had done in earlier times. To
woman there has never come any such privi-
lege. Although her duties are much light-
ened, she must still be a housekeeper if she
would be a home-maker.

One explanation that has been given for
the differences in the courses that man's and
woman's activities have taken is that woman
is less progressive than man and more
opposed to change. Another is that her
work is so closely connected with personal
needs and has associated with it so much of
sentiment that it cannot be delegated to out-
siders. Whatever the cause may be, the

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN 23

average married man's work today has cer-
tain distinct advantages over the average
married woman's. It is more varied and
more likely to call special talents into play,
and it takes him out among people and gives
him a broad outlook.

If we view the situation in a bargaining
spirit, it may seem fair that when man
earns the money woman should care for the
house. If, however, we consider the amount
of life that each is securing from work, the
inequalities of the situation become appar-
ent. There is always, to be sure, an occa- ^^
sional man who, recognizing the disabilities
under which his wife labors, seeks to equal-
ize matters by accepting a share in home
responsibilities and work. The discovery ^
of the necessity for such action, to which
neither tradition nor custom points, is a
mark of intelligence. The acceptance of
the responsibility after it is recognized is the
result of an unselfishness of the highest
form, to which society does not direct him
as it does to activities for the purpose of
supporting the family, nor instinct prompt
him as it does woman to her self-sacrifices

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24 HOME PROBLEMS

in caring for the family. His recognition
of the unequal distribution of life and his
efforts at equalization are triumphs of wis-
dom and love over nature, tradition, and
custom.

Unselfish man has in the past been woe-
fully handicapped. Fifty years ago he
could not have said to his wife, as he can
now, "Do no cooking today, but buy some
baked beans or boiled ham for supper and
you go to the art exhibition." Fifty years
ago there was little object in trying to re-
lieve his wife of her household cares, for
then there was little else upon which she
could profitably spend her time. Now,
when he wishes to be unselfish, his oppor-
tunities for accomplishing something worth
while thereby are great. Of course he is
always encountering his wife's desire to be
unselfish also, and to stay at home and cook
the food he likes and otherwise to provide
for his comfort, but the two must settle that
between themselves, with due regard on the
part of each for preserving the proper
balance in the life of the other. In this
struggle the greater possibilities in the way

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN 25

of development and increase of lif 6 lie with
man. To woman it is given to accept a self-
sacrifice which nature has mapped out for
her by specializing her for childbearing
and which society has mapped out for her
by specializing her for housekeeping. To
man it is given to map out for himself a
new path into unselfishness and to secure
the expansion of powers that comes from
pioneering.

Nor is this higher affection merely its
own reward. To the increase of life brought
by love is added increase in all other direc-
tions, presupposing always ideas and ideals
in woman as well as in man. With leisure
created by man's unselfishness, woman can
study and secure mental development which
makes her a wiser conserver of man's health,
a better comrade in his leisure, and a more
intelligent helper in his labors. To use the
phraseology of our definition of life, she can •
better assist him to secure health, to enjoy
the pleasures of the senses, to learn, and
to do.

He wishes health. There was a timej
when his work demanded life-giving, mus-

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26 HOME PROBLEMS

cular exercise in the fresh air, when his
house was so loosely built that it was in-
evitably well ventilated, when he lived so
far from his neighbors that there was no
danger of catching their diseases either
through contamination of water supply or
otherwise, when his food passed directly
from garden to table, fresh and unadulter-
ated. Then health came almost unbidden.
His wife, though she could help him in
many other ways, could do little for his
health except to cook his food properly.

Later, things changed. He moved into
the town and his neighbor's sewage perco-
lated into his well. His house was tightly
built and admitted little air through the
cracks. His work became sedentary and
kept him indoors most of the time. His
food was brought to him from the four
corners of the earth, passing through many
hands on the way, and was liable to deteri-
oration and adulteration.

For a time he failed to see that with
changed conditions his health problem had
changed. If, as a result, he did not die of
consumption or typhoid fever, he became

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN 27

anaemic and dyspeptic, his chest sank, his
circulation became impaired, and his liver
sluggish. Then he awoke to the fact that
if he would have good air he must adopt a
system of ventilation for his closed build-
ings; that if he would have good lung
capacity, quick circulation, and an active
liver, he must take regular physical exer-
cise; that if he would have safe water, he
must stir up the municipal authorities to do
their duty or must himself adopt means to
sterilize his drinking supply; that if he
would have wholesome food, there was
something necessary besides good cooking.
Dairies and markets must be inspected and
laws against adulteration must be made
and enforced.

Scientists came to his rescue and put at
his disposal an abundance of literature on
hygiene, sanitation, and physical culture,
but he had little time in which to read it.
So it has come about that with his altered
health problem there has been opened to
woman the opportunity to do something
more for man's health than to cook his food.
If she is intelligent and has leisure, she can

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28 HOME PROBLEMS

Study sanitation and hygiene and make prac-
tical application of their principles in her
home. She can take lessons in physical cul-
I ture, pass them on to her husband and exer-

j cise with him a few minutes every day, thus

' helping him to overcome the effects of his
sedentary occupation. She can, through her

' clubs, stir up the town authorities to pro-
vide good water, to clean the streets and

; prevent disease-laden dust from blowing
about, to care properly for garbage and
sewage, and to inspect places where food is
kept for sale. In many ways she can help
in the struggle against disease which man

J made necessary when he became a town
dweller.

Man wishes to enjoy the pleasures of the
.senses, among which not the least in impor-

^ tance is the sense of taste. This sense God
gave for man's enjoyment, and then pro-
vided for its satisfaction many delicious
natural flavors. It is not, however, the man
in whose house there is most cooking done
who gets the greatest pleasure from taste,
and it is frequently just he who gets the
least enjoyment from the other senses. If

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN 29

a man insists upon taking his wife to see the
woods when the violets are in blossom, in-
stead of letting her stay at home to make
shortcake for his supper, he loses his short-
cake, but plain strawberries and cream and
bread and butter often taste better after a
brisk walk than shortcake does without the
walk, and in this case the man gets not only
the taste of the food, but also the smell of
the woods, the sight of the flowers, and the
sound of the birds. Nor is it the man in
whose house there is most cleaning done
who gets most pleasure from the sense of
sight. If a man insists on or acquiesces in
the reduction of the number of carpets, cur-
tains, and draperies, because they make too
much care for his wife, he loses the beauty
of these furnishings, but the absence of cur-
tains may make it possible for him to feast
his eyes on the waving trees and the ever
changing sky, while the reduction of care
may make it possible for his wife to go with
him to art gallery or concert, or to make
such a study of art and music as to increase
his own enjoyment and appreciation of
them.

Of THE

UNIVERSITY

'>H'^LlfOH>i^h^^ Digitized by VjOOQIC

30 HOME PROBLEMS

^ He wishes to learn. Most men do, even
after their college days are over. He wishes
to have a background of information in
order that he may understand current
events better, to know of the world and its
progress, and of the relation of his special
occupation to the world's work. But alas!
He has little time for general reading.
Often he has not even time to go to the
library. An intelligent and educated wife
can often, providing she has leisure, do for
him much which he would do in his own
spare moments if he had them.

J He wishes to do. Who is there who does
not occasionally say, "If I had money, if
I had time, I would do so and so?" This
suggests the kind of doing that is pleasur-
able, that is better than leisure, and which
an assured income cannot stop. It often
happens that a man's work borders on this
kind of activity. He is a teacher and loves
his profession, but in order to do his work
satisfactorily he ought to have time for in-
dependent study and research. If there
were fewer papers to correct, a little less
routine, he might have time for original

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MORE LIFE FOR MAN 3 1

work which would leaven all the rest Or
perhaps he is a draftsman working all day
at monotonous tasks, but amid surroundings
that inspire him to do some work on his
own account, and to grow in his profession.
The wide-awake, educated woman has it in
her power frequently to become conversant
with her husband's work, to lessen his
drudgery, and, having saved him a little
time for original work, to make it go further
than it otherwise would because of her
intelligent cooperation and assistance.

If living consists in being healthy, in en-i^
joying the pleasures of the senses, in learn-
ing, in doing, and in loving, modern man
stands a better chance of living than his
predecessor did. The reasons are many, w/
and not the least of them is the fact that his
wife lives more.

Nor is the end in sight. If women's
opportunities to prepare themselves for and
to enter upon careers unconnected with the
home multiply in the future as they have in
the past, men may be called upon to adjust
themselves to much more radical changes.
But the indications are that these changes

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32 HOME PROBLEMS

will offer to them further opportunities for
the expression of disinterested affection and
larger lives through the expansion of the
lives of those they love.

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HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYEE

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MORE LIFE FOR
THE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYEE

"T WILL accept nothing which all can-
X not have their counterpart of on the
same terms." In these words of Walt
Whitman's can all of us who cherish the
democratic ideal of equality of privilege
and opportunity express our feelings with
regard to domestic service, for when we are
able to rise above the trials and tribulations
that the institution brings to ourselves and
to look upon it from an impersonal point of
view, we find that the chief source of our
dissatisfaction with it is in the fact that it
gives benefits to one class by taking their
counterpart from another.

The popular toleration of domestic serv-
ice is due to a misapplication of the theory
that the family is the unit of society. This
theory has, in the past, played an important
part in social evolution by calling attention
to and emphasizing the family relation. It
has, however, led to many undemocratic

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36 HOME PROBLEMS

practices. This has been not so much be-
cause of anything wrong with the theory, as
because it has not been supported by a clear
conception of the value of the individual
life. Thus unsupported, it has, by allowing
itself to become entangled with the theory
that man is the logical representative of
the family in society, taken from woman the
incentive to, and the opportunity for, inde-
pendent action, and has also been responsi-
ble for the grossest infringements of her
property rights. Thus unsupported, too, it
has, by emphasizing the family as an insti-
tution, rather than the right of the indi-
vidual to the family relation, led to the
condoning of the maintenance of certain
families at the expense of the freedom of
individuals to enter into the family relation.
Thus in slave times the family connections
of the blacks were ruthlessly shattered in
order to provide the service that was thought
necessary to preserve the family life of the
whites.

A better working theory, and one that is
less likely to lead to undemocratic practices,
is the one that sees in the individual the

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MORE LIFE FOR THE EMPLOYEE 37

unit, and in the family relation one of the
most important means for promoting his
happiness and social usefulness. Such a
view of the value of the individual and of
the importance of the family relation leads
logically to the conception of the obligation
of the individual who accepts the privi-
leges of the family relation so to adjust
his life to the lives of the other members
of his family group as to preserve their in-
dividual freedom, and to cooperate with
them in the effort so to adjust the group to
the social order as not to interfere with the
freedom of other individuals to enter into
and to maintain the family relation.

In the light of this view of society,
domestic service looms up most undemo-
cratic. It is so ordered as to bring a com-
bination of benefits to a privileged class.
This combination consists of the opportu-
nity to live in retirement with those to whom
they are bound by kinship or affection or by
both, and thus to transform the places where
they eat and sleep into homes, and the privi-
lege of getting rid of the multiple activities
which the maintenance of separate homes

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38 HOME PROBLEMS

involves, the cooking, cleaning, etc., and of
being able to engage in activities of their
choice, and to secure leisure for social
intercourse.

This combination of privileges is at pres-
ent secured at the expense of a correspond-
ing combination of privileges in the serving
.class. The result is three distinct disabili-
ties for this class. The first, which arises
from the fact that the domestic servant has
not free choice of residence, and must ac-
cept the external form of home where her
employer has his real home, may be called
ethical, because its most serious result is
that it takes from her the opportunity for
moral development that comes from home-

"^making. The second is industrial, and
arises from the fact that she must offer in
exchange for wages no particular services,
but her entire time, to be disposed of as her

y employer sees fit. The third, which arises
from her intimate personal relation to her
employer, is social, and results in the deter-
mination of her position in society, not by
her worth nor by her qualifications for social
intercourse, but by her position as a member
of the serving class.

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MORE LIFE FOR THE EMPLOYEE 39

These three disabilities on the part of the
servants react on the employers, and bring
them three forms of inconvenience. The
first is a feeling of responsibility for the sex
relations of the employee, a responsibility
that is not felt with reference to those with
whom the relation is a purely business
one, such as the butcher, the grocer, the
seamstress.

The second is the difficulty of making
the servants "know and keep their places."
This leads at times to such serious dilemmas
as the one in which the man found himself
who appealed to Marion Harland, through
her queries column in one of the daily
papers, to know whether he ought to recog-
nize his family servant on the street, and
if so, whether he ought to lift his hat or
merely to nod his head. One can imagine
this poor man staying closely within his
office on Thursday afternoons, if Marion
Harland was not prompt with her reply,
for fear that if he ventured forth upon the
street he might on turning a corner come
suddenly upon his household helper, and,
being still unsupplied with a code of eti-
quette, not know how to conduct himself.

i/^

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40 HOME PROBLEMS

The third inconvenience to the employer
is the lack in the servant of personal respon-
sibility for good work, the inevitable result
of time service.

To remove these three disabilities from
the employee and the three inconveniences
from the employer, certain changes in house-
hold administration must be made. First,
^ the relation of mistress and servant must be
changed to the more democratic one of
employer and employee. Second, the work
^of the household must be so arranged as to
allow a person to perform one service, such
as cleaning, for many families, instead of
many services for one family. Third, the
^work done in the home must be reduced,
and then compressed within the limits of a
reasonable working day, in order that it
may not interfere with the home life of the
employee.

For these modifications in household
administration the changes that are going
on outside of the home are paving the way.
Public education is removing the stigma
from domestic service by refusing to recog-
nize class distinctions in the distribution of

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MORE LIFE FOR THE EMPLOYEE 41

its benefits. Commerce, industry, science, «/
and art are cooperating to reduce the amount
of work necessarily done in the home.

Central plants for the distribution of hot "^
water for heating, cleaning, and bathing
purposes are now in use in many places.
One city, Colorado Springs, is said to be
considering the construction of a central
pneumatic cleaning plant. Central refrig-
erating plants are practicable.

Commercial changes are continually y
making it possible to buy commodities
which it was formerly necessary to prepare
at home. This has been referred to so
often that it need only be mentioned here,
although it is one of the most important of
the social changes that are affecting the con-
ditions of home life. Improved methods of "^
transportation are bringing us fresh fruit
all the year around, and thus reducing the
work of preserving and of making desserts.
Industrial changes are making it possible ^
to have performed outside of the home serv-
ices like laundry work, mending, and carpet
cleaning, which it used to be necessary to
include in household labor.

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42 HOME PROBLEMS

^ Advances in medical science are putting
nursing on the plane of the professions, and
making the hospital seem a better place
than the private house for the care of the
sick. Hygienic considerations make it seem
wise that maternity cases also be cared for
in hospitals.

y Advances in sanitary science are making
it not only desirable, but possible, to transfer
one whole class of duties from the house-
keeper and her assistants to the individual
members of the family. These are connected
with the care of the bedroom and its fur-
nishings. Now that it seems best that each
person should have a separate sleeping
room, and now that knowledge of hygiene
is available for all, there is no reason why
every able-bodied adult should not assume
full charge of his own room, having it
cleaned and changing bedclothes and towels
as often as he thinks necessary considering
the state of his health, the amount of sun
that his room receives, and the amount of
dust to which it is exposed.
si Kindergartens are continually taking
children at a younger age. Clubrooms

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MORE LIFE FOR THE EMPLOYEE 43

are being made available for private enter-
tainments.

Art is lightening household labor by
teaching a better way in house decoration
and furnishing. By teaching form, color,
and design it is showing that a good color
on the wall, which, being vertical, sheds the
dust by reason of the force of gravity, may
give so much esthetic satisfaction as to take
away the necessity for many of our dust-
entrapping decorations; that one piece of
pottery of good color and form may please
the eye more than a whole mantel shelf full
of nondescript articles of bric-a-brac; that
plain furniture of good form may be more
beautiful than that which is covered with
carving and brass filigree. Plain, substan-
tial furniture and simplicity in decoration
are not only lessening work, but are making
it more practicable to turn houses over to
professional cleaners.

Another change should be mentioned
which, though at first thought it seems to
have little connection with household man-
agement, may prove to be of much signifi-
cance. This change has come about through

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44 HOME PROBLEMS

the fact that the time of preparation nec-
essary for the professions is continually
lengthening. The result of this i^ that there
is in college towns (and with the spread of
university extension and of correspondence
study there is coming to be in other towns)
a class of young people who are still study-
ing, but who must and should support them-
selves. The young men of this class now
take care of furnaces, beat rugs, and perform
other such services. The young women take
care of children. If it were not for the
popular feeling with respect to housework,
they might be employed in many other ways.
There is a whole class of tasks, like the
cleaning of silver, the making of beds, and
the serving of meals, which require less
skill and experience than cooking and less
strength than the heavy cleaning. These,
as Lucy Maynard Salmon says in "Domestic
Service," are frequently not well performed,
yet, on the other hand, they involve no prin-
ciples which an intelligent person cannot
master in a very short time. After the prin-
ciples have been learned the tasks become
only light routine work, suitable for relax-

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ation after brain work. These tasks might
be given to the students referred to above
with profit both to themselves and to house-
keepers.

The changes of which mention has been
made, particularly the commercial and in-
dustrial ones, have been due chiefly to man's
enterprise. This is because man's life has
given him a broad and general view of soci-
ety and its needs which woman's life has
not given to her, and because his position
as breadwinner has given him an incentive
to anticipate human demands and to meet
them with business ventures, an incentive
which woman's position as housekeeper has
not given to her. Woman is now, however,
fast getting the far view, and has the advan-
tage of having also the intimate view of
human needs which she has secured through
her care of the family. So it is happening
that while man is going on ahead and initi-
ating great changes, woman is following
close behind and directing the changes into
channels which lead to the satisfaction of
real human needs. Thus men, by establish-
ing great bakeries, showed the economic ad-

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46 HOME PROBLEMS

vantage of having bread made in large quan-
tities. Women, like Mrs. Brainard, of
Chicago, who started the Home Delicacies
Company, have followed after and shown
that man's methods could be employed in
making bread that meets the demands of
taste and health. Men, by establishing pub-
lic laundries, showed the economic advan-
tage of having the laundry work removed
from the home. It was left for women, like
the Misses White, of Brookline, Massachu-
setts, who started the Sunshine Laundry, to
show that public laundries could make
clothes really clean, and at the same time
preserve them for the future use of their
owners (a point which all who patronize
laundries will appreciate) .

This control of changes woman must
continue to exercise. She must also accept
the task of adjusting household work to the
social changes that have already taken place.
For this double work she is well prepared.
As an individual she can make the adjust-
ments in her own home. As a club member
she can, in cooperation with other women,
look after the social work.

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She can, through her clubs, establish
residence clubs where household employees
can live in comparative freedom, public
kitchens from which food can be sent to
be served in private houses, and in which
the workers will be on the same footing
as the workers in any other trade, bureaus
from which special helpers can be sent to
work by the day or hour, and public nurser-
ies which shall combine the bacteriological
cleanliness of hospitals with the educational
advantages of kindergartens. Women's
clubs are particularly well prepared to do
these things, first because failure would
mean no serious loss to any individual, and.^
second, because the members are intelligent
enough to make their failures as well as
their successes of benefit to those who come
after them, an important consideration in
all progressive work.

Besides this public work, woman can
arrange the work in her own home so as to
give her helper a limited day's work — of
ten hours, say — and thus make her free to
choose her own place of residence. This
she may do by preparing her own breakfast

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48 HOME PROBLEMS

and employing her helper from ten in the
morning until eight at night, or by going
out for her evening meal and employing the
helper from six in the morning until four in
the afternoon, or in some one of the number-
less ways which special conditions will sug-
gest. Or she can make such adjustments as
shall make it possible for her to employ
special helpers. In this her greatest diffi-
culty will probably arise from the fact that
one helper cannot perform the same service
in several places at the same time, and the
housekeeper's time schedule will have to be
changed. It will require an effort for her
to realize in her conduct that difference be-
tween disorder and dirt which she recog-
nizes with her intellect, and to act upon the
belief that delay in dishwashing involves
disorder, but not necessarily uncleanliness,
and that beds left open in the sun for many
hours are really cleaner than those which
are closed up early in the morning.

With cooking done in public kitchens,
with washing done in public laundries, with
cleaning done by specialists, with the indi-
vidual members of the family taking charge

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of their own rooms, with hospitals to care
for the sick, and with public nurseries and
kindergartens to help with the care of babies
and young children, there would still be left
certain connecting links of work even in
families employing regular helpers for a
limited number of hours each day. It is
these odds and ends that the various mem-
bers of the family will have to accept as
their tasks and perform in payment for the
privilege of preserving family life without
shattering democratic ideals.

With these changes the household em-
ployee will emerge from the restricted
existence of "domestic service" to the
broader life of ethical, industrial, and social
freedom.

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FOR ALL

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*' . . , the words health, whole, holy, arc from the
same stock." *' The doctor does not give health, but the
winds of heaven ; . . . " — Edward Carpenter.

THERE are conditions in life which
favor physical vigor. There are also
conditions which stimulate mental activity,
and tend to provide for it the necessary time
and energy. Unfortunately these two sets t^
of conditions, far from being identical, are
often directly at war with each other.

Suppose, as an example of the former
conditions, a man living apart from his
fellows and obliged to secure his own food.
The trees hang their fruit at such a height
that in order to reach it he must exert him-
self moderately, not enough to exhaust
himself, but enough to insure a good diges-
tion. In pursuit of game he must keep out
of doors and be much afoot. Unpolluted
mountain streams invite him to drink and to
bathe. To keep within easy reach of his
food supply summer and winter, he must

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54 HOME PROBLEMS

f requentiy change his abode. For this rea-
son he depends upon clothing rather than
upon closely built walls for shelter, and
moves away from the debris which collects
around him before it has endangered his
bodily well-being. Thus the conditions of
his life combine to give him the exercise
and fresh air and sunlight and good food
and good water and cleanliness that are
necessary for his physical vigor.

Now, suppose a man living under the
other conditions — those that stimulate
mental activity. A library tempts him to
read, a university to study. The sight of
great works of art or of other material
products of human genius awakens any
talents he may have. Association with
thinking men and women induces currents
of thought within him. Finally, contact
with people who are willing and glad to
climb his tree for him and pursue his game
makes it possible for him to find time for
brain work.

But the opportunity to read and study
instead of the necessity for climbing trees
and chasing game means the loss of the con-

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dition that made for muscular activity, for
good circulation, and good digestion. The
decline in muscular activity makes his body
produce heat less rapidly, and creates a de-
mand for closely built walls and roof in
addition to clothing. This means a loss of
the condition that insured a plentiful sup-
ply of sunlight and fresh air. The perma-
nent shelter makes it impossible for him to
move away from the debris of his food and
the excretions of his body, and thus destroys
the condition that in itself favored and
practically compelled cleanliness.

All this would make no difference, pro-
viding physical vigor were not necessary to
mental activity. This, however, is a theory
with which in the past we toyed to our sor-
row. We conceived of a physical life and
of an intellectual life, of a healthy body as
necessary for the physical but not for the
intellectual, and of development as coming
through the putting off of the physical and
the putting on of the intellectual. But we
found that we were mistaken. The man
from whom we were expecting beautiful
poetry breathed bad air, weakened his lungs.

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56 HOME PROBLEMS

fell a victim to tuberculosis, and we lost him
and his song. The man to whom we were
looking to plan for us beautiful buildings,
to compensate in part for the natural beau-
ties we had lost, weakened his body by
insufficient exercise, then drank polluted
water, died of typhoid fever, and we lost
him and the beauties he might have created.
Then we began to think, and we realized
that there is only one life; that that life is
a bundle of desires, of loves, of sympathies,
and of hopes ; that development is not a put-
ting off, but an expansion, coming when the
desires increase, when the loves widen, when
the sympathies broaden, and when the hopes
get a farther view into the future ; that for
^he outward expression of this inner and in-
visible life the body is the only tool, and
that for the expression of the whole life,
whether it be a life of few desires or many,
a "whole" or healthy body is necessary.
Acting upon this conviction, we began to
establish kindergartens, and schools for
manual training, for handicraft, and engi-
neering, in order to train the hand to
execute in material form what the mind

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conceived as an abstraction. We added de-
partments of physical culture to the depart-
ments of Latin and Greek in our colleges,
in order to train the "whole" man and the
"whole" woman.

To fit a body to be the tool for the satis-
faction of a few desires, and those mainly
the desires for food and drink and shelter,
is not a difficult task. It is only when we
try to make it satisfy the many desires, in-
cluding that for intellectual activity, that
trouble begins. Then the poor body, put
upon the stretch, is likely to develop a weak
spot To provide a suitable shelter for a
body of few desires would puzzle no one.
To build a fit habitation for a body of many
desires is a problem that calls for all our
experience and ingenuity.

At this point comes along the man who
pooh-poohs at all things hygienic, and tells
us that if we will only cease to think of our
bodies we shall be all right; and this man
has much on his side of the argument. He
forgets, however, that what we have broken
we must also mend, if we would have a
whole. In the future there may be born a

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58 HOME PROBLEMS

"whole'* child under such favorable condi-
tions that he will develop harmoniously
without thought on his part or upon that of
others. At present, however, amid the con-
ditions that we brought upon ourselves by
conceiving of an intellectual life apart from
the physicayiarmonious expansion is im-
"possIBK^without a conscious effort to regain
bodily "wholeness."

The; harmful effects of dwelling upon
"unwholeness" are not to be overlooked.
To avoid them we must keep our attention
upon the good as far as possible. There
have been in the past, if we can believe the
testimony of ancient statuary, fine, well-
developed, full-chested, and straight-limbed
bodies. These we must study, and think of
our own underdeveloped bodies only long
enough to learn how we can restore them
to the proportions of the body beautiful.
There are conditions that favor the develop-
ment of the body beautiful. These we must
analyze, thinking of bad conditions only
long enough to learn how to make them
good. Our model for our drinking water
must be the water of an unpolluted moun-

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tain Stream ; for our air, the air of the open
country; for our exercise, the varied move-
ments of "the natural man" in his efforts to
secure food; for our food, that which the
man eats whose surroundings favor physical
vigor.

To be sure, we cannot hope to regain the
body beautiful, nor to have houses that shall
favor its development, until we have secured
the city beautiful, which shall unite fresh
air and good water and abundance of sun-
light and the opportunity for enjoyable
exercise and the chance to get good food
with the stimulus to and the time for intel-
lectual activity. There are some things,
however, that we can do and some things
that we can leave undone which will help
to restore good conditions. Aj^^"

Why, in the matter of fresh air, do we act 1^*^>>-^^
upon the principle, Windows closed except
when it is absolutely necessary to open
them? Why do we not adopt the motto,
Windows open except when it is absolutely
necessary to close them? Why do we not
have soft woolen jackets, such as the golfers
use, to put on as the first expedient to avoid

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cold, leaving the closing of the windows till
the last? Why, in the winter time, do we
not put strips of wood in the lower parts of
our windows, so as to leave an open space
between the sashes, where the air can enter
without striking us directly? Why, in the
summer weather, do we ever close our win-
dows? Is it because of the dust? If the
dust is unreasonably great, why do we not
stir up the town authorities to keep the
streets in such condition that we can have
fresh air? If it is not unreasonably great,
but we have draperies that we value more
than fresh air, perhaps we need to make a
little revaluation. Why, in the beautiful
autumn and spring days, when it is just too
cool to have the windows open without a
fire, do we not, instead of closing our houses,
have a little fire and open the windows? Is
it because that would be too expensive?
Then could we not have one less course at
dinner or one less dress a year and keep the
air? Why do we wait until we have time
for a promenade before we "air" the baby?
Why do we not put the baby in its carriage
on a sunny porch? Is it because we think

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that the baby, in some mysterious way, de-
rives benefit from the exercise of our legs?
Why do we always eat and sleep within
doors? Why, when we plan new houses,
do we not arrange them so that the kitchen
and serving pantry will communicate as
easily with a porch as with the indoor
dining room? Why do we not have roof
gardens, where we can sleep under the
beautiful stars in warm weather? A shower
bath open at the top, so that we could take
water and air and sun baths all at the same
time, would add to the attractiveness of the
roof, and it might also be possible to have
arrangements there for our European break-
fast or our afternoon tea. Why do we ever
shut the sun out of unoccupied rooms?
Why do we not let it blaze in its life-giving,
sterilizing rays? Draperies again? Car-
pets? Curtains? Well, there is one conso-
lation. The old-fashioned, fast dyes are
being revived, and we may in time have
furnishings that will stand the sun.

In the matter of muscular exercise, why
do we have our working clothes (humor-
ously so called) made so that they weigh

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down our legs and bind down our arms;
while our play clothes, our golf, tennis, and
bathing suits, are made so as to permit free
muscular activity? Why do not women,
when they do their housework, which would
give play to every muscle if it had a chance,
wear suits akin to gymnasium suits, less
abbreviated in the skirt, perhaps, but not
long enough to be stepped upon when the
body is bent over? Why do we put skirts
on the baby that is just learning to draw
himself to his feet, when we know that
he cannot avoid stepping upon them and
wrenching his head forward? Why, in
short, do we put skirts on any living creature
until that living creature demands them?
If we did not put skirts on our girls until
they discovered that they were differently
dressed from the rest of their sex, what a
long period of free, healthful, muscular ac-
tivity they would have ! One of the prettiest
sights 1 ever saw was the little girls of a
New England town dressed for coasting in
woolen tights and sweaters and tasseled
caps.

On this subject of clothes the hygienist

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and the teacher of physical culture have
done their best to reform us. The former
has shown us grewsome cross-sections of
people who have had their ribs displaced
by tight lacing. The latter has stood up be-
fore us at exhibitions and assumed graceful
poses. But somehow neither has related the
subject sufficiently to life itself. It is only
when we think of life as made up of desires
that find expression only through the body,
when we think that by a motion, by a pos-
ture, we can express love, hatred, sympathy,
cordiality, that we begin to cherish the
smallest muscle and to think of clothes, not
with reference to whether they are tight or
loose, but with reference to whether they
help or hinder the body in its effort to ex-
press the inner life.

As to baths, why do we locate our bath-
rooms on the north side of the house, and
then make junk shops of them by filling
them with blacking boxes and medicine
bottles and hot water bags and any other
thing that is not wanted elsewhere? Given
a nice, clean, white tub in an airy room,
with the morning sun falling directly upon
it, and who can resist a bath?

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64 HOME PROBLEMS

Last of all comes food, and here is where
the man who fears the physical effect of
self-consciousness sees most danger. "Eat
what you wish and don't think about it, and
you will be all right." Alas, that is what
the world has been doing, and instead of
being all right, it has fallen a prey to num-
berless diseases that can be traced either
directly or indirectly to dietetic errors. In
food, as in other matters, we have a standard
to guide us. That is the amount and kind
of food that a person eats who lives under
conditions that favor physical vigor. Per-
haps the best we can do for ourselves is to
think of the food that we ate with a relish
when we were camping. Then when we
find that this plain, simple diet, without
"made dishes" and pastry, is no longer pala-
table, we will probably decide that we need
a long walk, and will take it if we can
possibly find the time.

Fresh air, sunlight, cleanliness, exercise,
good food, good water — these, the condi-
tions of physical vigor, come to that part of
the world that is living under the intellec-
tual stimulus only as the result of a con-

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scious effort ; but to what better use can we
put our intellects after they are aroused
than to the endeavor to regain bodily
"wholeness"?

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IN MERE LIVING

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THE machinery of life and life itself ^
are continually getting mixed up, both
in our theories and also in our practices, and
it is frequently difficult to say of a given act
whether it is a part of life itself or whether
it is just a means of preparation for life.
It was this fact, I suppose, that Henry
Drummond had in mind when he said that,
even at the worst, the struggle for life was^^
really life itself. He applied this, to be sure,
to the fierce struggles for food and other nec-
essaries of life in which, during early stages
of development, human beings engaged for
the purpose of self-preservation. It is just
as applicable, however, to our present strug-
gle for life, for the care and the foresight
that we must exercise in order to secure the
food and the shelter and the fresh air and
the sunlight which are necessary simply as
preparation for what we consider our life
work really involve just the thought and the

exercise of reason that make life for us as

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70 HOME PROBLEMS

distinguished from mere existence. Thus
the fact that the harder we must struggle for
life the greater is that mental activity which
is an essential part of life itself is the first
source of consolation for the fact that we
have to struggle.

But there is another and a greater source
of consolation. It was Drummond, I think,
who originated the expression, the struggle
for the life of others, making it cover all the
activities to which we are prompted by love.
Of these activities the most important is
home-making, and it is the opportunity that
^home affords for merging the struggle for
life into the struggle for the life of others
that takes the sting from the work necessary
for self-preservation. Thus, in providing a
shelter to protect himself from the elements
and to keep him in condition for work, man,
if he be a home-maker, performs the same
service for those he loves; and in providing
for herself food that shall fit her to be an
efficient working member of society, woman,
if she be a home-maker, performs the same
service for those who are bound to her by
affection. Herein lies the second source of

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MORE JOY IN MERE LIVING 7 1

consolation for the fact that the greater part
of our time and energy must be given to
securing and caring for the machinery of
life.

In getting ready to live, and in helping
others to get ready to live — in these two
ways we spend the greater part of our lives.
But there are some activities in life which
are simply a part of living. Of these, or of
part of them. Browning makes David sing
in "Saul":

Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to

rock.
The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool,

silver shock
Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear.
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust

divine.
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught

of wine.
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so sofrly and well.
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

To the pleasures which are here sug-
gested, and which are chiefly those of the

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senses, should be added, if we are to have
anything like a complete list, those pleas-
ures which come from going to the theater,
from listening to music, and from looking
at works of art, providing, of course, we do
not take any of them too seriously; those
pleasures which come from social inter-
course with friends, and which are not de-
pendent upon "improving conversation,"
but which spring from the opportunity to
be near and to talk with those we love; and
those pleasures which come from medita-
tion on life and its meaning, but which do
not involve any effort to straighten out its
tangles. "Improving" conversation and
efforts to achieve artistic appreciation and
to make the world better are parts of life,
but they are also parts of its struggle, and
therefore must be excluded from "the joys
of mere living."

If these pleasures that are ends and in no
sense means are a legitimate part of life,
they must be taken into consideration not
only in adjusting the machinery of our own
lives so as to have time for them, but also
in adjusting the machinery of home-making

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SO as to secure them for others. I know a
woman who has four of the healthiest and
happiest children in the country. She is
also the fortunate possessor of horses and a
carriage. If the day dawns bright and the
woods seem to call for her, she has the
horses harnessed, bundles the children into
the carriage, puts a basket under the seat,
and starts off down the street. On the way
she picks up a congenial spirit or two, and
stopping at the market fills her basket with
bread and fruit and cooked meat or other
kinds of food that can be bought ready for
eating. Then, with no more ado than this,
she is off for a whole day of "the joys of
mere living" in the woods. This she is able
to do because she has simplified the ma-
chinery of her home-making by excluding
useless decorations from furnishings and
clothing. Nor is it to be understood that she
has thereby traded off the pleasures of beau-
tiful home surroundings for the joys of
frequent glimpses of nature. Her windows
command broad views of lake and lawn, in
the presence of which elaborate draperies
would seem like impertinences, and her

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74 HOME PROBLEMS

children have bright eyes and clear skins
and well-developed figures, which plain
clothing sets off better than ruffles and
flounces.

In passing, we must not fail to note that
this woman has done something more than
to simplify housekeeping. She has also
^simplified the machinery of picnics — a
great art. We have not, all of us, horses
and carriages, but we can get some kind of
conveyance — an electric car, if nothing
better — and we can pick up on the way to
the picnic food which will taste just as good
in the open air as that over which we fre-
quently wear ourselves out before starting.

It is interesting to see how things work
themselves out in this world. We used to
clean house in the spring. Although spring
is violet time, and a season of enormous pos-
sibilities in the way of real living, yet this
custom for many years worked little hard-
ship, because most people lived reasonably
near to nature all the time. Later, however,
life became so artificial that we really
needed occasional excursions into the coun-
try. Then, too, the kindergartens began to

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teach the children to see and to enjoy
nature. Then, just in the nick of time, just
as we had encountered the need of and
the incentive to trips into the country, the
necessity for "spring cleaning" was taken
away. We began to have hardwood or
painted floors, which made it possible to do
housecleaning a little at a time all the year
around. Thus there is now no great piece
of work left to be done in the spring, when
we really ought to be in the woods.

Perhaps the most interesting of the recent
movements in the direction of simplifying v/^
housework is that in favor of sun-dried
underwear, towels, bed linen, etc. This
stands for another "working together for
good." When life became complex we be-
gan to begrudge the time necessary for iron-
ing, and sometimes, if we thought we could
use our time more profitably than in iron-
ing, we used our clothes "rough-dried."
But now we no longer speak of "rough-
dried" clothes, because that suggests only
their negative advantage in saving work;
but we say "sun-dried," because hygienists
have told us that articles that contain in

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76 HOME PROBLEMS

their meshes fresh, sunned air are more
healthful than those that contain the im-
pure air of kitchen or laundry. They have
told us, also, that because air is a poor con-
ductor of heat, and because clothes that
have not been pressed contain more air than
those that have, we can get more protection
from a given weight of underwear that has
been sun-dried than from the same weight
of that which has been ironed.

But no one is going to make effort to get
time for "the joys of mere living" until he
sees a prospect of getting them. For a long
time we have recognized the possibility of
getting these pleasures in large quantities in
the summer time, during our vacations, but
we have not recognized half the chances
that lie about us all the year. Of all sea-
sons the winter seems most unpromising,
and yet I have experienced more joy from
simply being alive in the winter than at any
other time. On the greater part of the west
shore of Lake Michigan there is a bluff.
This serves to protect the shore from the
west winds which prevail in that part of
the world, and it also receives and reflects

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the morning sun. In cold weather the sand
is hard and as easy to walk upon as a cement
walk. On winter mornings, even when the
thermometer is below zero, one can walk
along the shore in perfect comfort in cloth-
ing that is light enough to make walking
pleasurable. It is possible, also, with per-
fect comfort, to stop and build a fire, make
coffee, and eat a lunch. And the lake and
the sky present constant but ever changing
beauties, and the sun sparkles on the ice
that is heaped up near the shore. It is in-
deed good to be alive on the west shore of
Lake Michigan of a bright winter's morn-
ing, and yet, although I have spent hours
walking on the shore on Saturday mornings,
I have never seen a person besides those
who were with me. Where are the mothers ?
Why don't they bring their children down
there? Don't they know the fun of tramp-
ing up the shore and building fires and hav-
ing little camp lunches, and of watching
the winter landscape? This is but one in-
stance of joys that are within the reach of
all, and yet are undiscovered. Doubtless
each one of us knows of some others such as

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78 HOME PROBLEMS

these, and wonders why others do not avail
themselves of them. If so, let's tell each
other about them.

But we lose joys in life not only by fail-
ing to find them and by complicating the

I machinery of life, but also by making ma-

^chinery of those things which are really
ends in themselves. There is bathing, for
example. We take baths so many times a
day or week in order to keep clean and
healthy. We might, if we arranged things
properly, forget about the necessity for
health and cleanliness, and jump into the
bath just for the sake of "the cool, silver
shock of the plunge." We perfunctorily
"change the air" in our homes so many
times each day, but it is possible to get so
enamored of living out of doors as to find
even the stillness of the air in the house un-
bearable. When one has reached that point
an open window is no longer a means to
health, but a part of the joy of living, be-

X cause it brings the sensation of moving air.

\ What a difference, too, between a walk
and a "constitutional"! I shall never for-
get a woman whom I saw one summer at a

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resort in one of the most beautiful parts of
the Adirondacks. She used to come forth
of a morning after breakfast and, with a set,
determined look upon her face, walk so
many times around the veranda, and then
retire to the parlor for the rest of the day.
Poor lady! I suppose she never saw that
woodsy path that led up the hill behind the
house, nor knew the joys of "leaping from
rock up to rock" in order to get to the top
of the hill, nor dreamed of the beauties of
the moss-covered rock at the top, with the
red-berried bush hanging over it. She
never knew the pleasures of getting lost in
the cranberry bog and having to wade the
stream to get out. Poor, poor ladyl

As for the joys of social intercourse with
those we love, we lose them partly by let-
ting them get mixed up with the machinery
of education. Study clubs are all very well
in their way and in their place, but there is
such a thing as having too many of them.
It is possible to get more profit as well as
more pleasure from reading a masterpiece
of literature for half an hour, and then talk-
ing with a friend for an hour and a half,

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than from listening to a rehash of the
masterpiece for an hour and then talking
with a lot of people we only half like for
another hour. It is possible, also, to lose
Mhe pleasures of the expression of friend-
ship by sacrificing them to formalities. If
we give dinners and receptions simply for
the sake of discharging social obligations,
we are bound to throw away time which for
the sake of the joy of living ought to be
given to those we love.
J But it is possible, also, to lose the pleas-
ures of friendship by allowing them to in-
terfere with the machinery of daily life, and
to come to a time when we have to sacrifice
either social intercourse or business. Per-
haps there is no means of entertaining which
yields so much satisfaction with so little
interference with that regularity in the daily
program that is necessary for health and
work as the afternoon tea. By this I mean,
not the large reception which sometimes
goes by the name of "tea," but the little,
informal tea drinking. The food that is
served at such a time is not a means of life,
but simply an addition to the dietary made

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for the sake of refreshment and pleas-
ure. It is not, therefore, necessary to serve
enough to sustain life from one meal to
another. Moreover, it is possible to buy
ready prepared all the materials — the bis-
cuits, the wafers, and the candies — and to
have them always on hand. If busy people
have it understood that they drink tea at
a certain hour when at home, and that their
friends are always welcome to drink with
them, they are likely to get visits with real
friends which they could never get in any
other way.

But there is another occupation which
may be an end in life without at the same
time being a means. That is meditation on
life and its meaning. To stand off from life
and to view its follies, its foibles, and its in-
consistencies, its pathos, its humor, to see all
sides of it — this is one of the joys of mere
living. Perhaps the best time for this is
during a walk in town, and it is the chance
to see life that can change a constitutional
upon city pavements from a means to life to
a part of life itself. He who is too busy
with the machinery of life to get a chance

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82 HOME PROBLEMS

to look upon life itself, as upon a drama,
loses half the joy of living.
J To stretch the muscles, to breathe deeply,
to feel the blood circulate rapidly, to feel
the wind blowing in one's face, to love and
to express love, to stand off and see life from
afar — these are joys for which it is worth
while to simplify the machinery of life.

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WE all seek beauty. We want the
beauty of form and of color which
appeals to the eye, but we want also the
greater beauties which, because they belong,
not to material, but to immaterial things,
make their appeal to the conscience and to
the intellect, rather than to the senses. We
want the beauties of lives in harmony with
their physical and their. social environment.

Esthetics is the philosophy of beauty. A
narrow conception of its province makes
it concern itself exclusively with the beau-
ties of material things. A broader and
better conception brings into its province
all beauties, including those of life and
of character and of harmonious human
relations.

Home Economics, like Esthetics, finds a
large part of its interest in material things.
The objects of its concern, the common arti-
cles of every-day use, such as chairs, tables,
beds, and bureaus, present the beauty prob-

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86 HOME PROBLEMS

lem in many, if not all, of its phases. Being
material, they are capable of beauty of out-
line and color. Being tools for the expres-
sion of the tastes of their owner or user, and
for the satisfaction of his desires, they are
capable of giving to his life the beauty of
harmony with its material surroundings.
Being made and sold and oftentimes cared
for by others than the user, they are capable
of giving beauty by bringing his life into
accord and into sympathetic relations with
other lives. There are, then, places where
Home Economics and Esthetics overlap.

As there is a narrow and also a wide view
of Esthetics, so there is a narrow and also
a wide view of Home Economics. The
former makes it deal exclusively with the
details of household management; the latter
^ makes its chief concern the problem of the
adjustment, through home life, of the indi-
vidual to society.

Where Home Economics and Esthetics,
considered in their restricted senses, meet,
we have a field of inquiry legitimate in it-
self, but fearfully liable to suffer by losing
connection with life and with vital interests.

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This common ground we call the art of^
House Decoration. It concerns itself with
the form, color, and ornamentation of arti-
cles of house furnishing and with the prob-
lem of so arranging them as to please the
eye.

But House Decoration is not the only
common ground between Home Economics
and Esthetics. Considered broadly, the two
subjects present an overlapping territory
coextensive almost with life itself. On this
field, which no one has ever named, there
present themselves for investigation not
only the finer articles of household utility —
the furniture, the curtains, and the draper-
ies — but also the meaner and commoner
articles — the pots, even, and the pans.
Each one of these demands to be studied,
not only with reference to its power to give
esthetic satisfaction through the sight, but
also with reference to its fitness to serve the
purpose for which it was created, with ref-
erence to its usefulness in the particular life
with which it is associated, and with refer-
ence to the possibility of there being any-
thing in the circumstances of its manufac-

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ture or sale or in the conditions of its care —
anything of injustice or oppression — which
has the power to destroy the beauty of the
life of the user by throwing it out of har-
mony with that of the maker, or of the
seller, or of the caretaker.

The desire to make home beautiful we
have always with us. At times it gets
planted where it can draw nourishment
only from that part of the field of House-
hold Decoration which is not only narrow,
but, because it is cut off from connection
with life, is shallow also. Planted there
where there is no deepness of earth it
sprouts with fearful rapidity. Many house-
keepers seem to have planted it in such spots
about the middle of the last century. The
result was a prodigious growth — three sets
of curtains in every window, sofa pillows
upon which no one was ever allowed, and
no one ever wished to lay his head, grill
work for archways, plaques, and sometimes
even embroidered banners and painted tam-
bourines to hang upon the wall. At inter-
vals, fortunately, new fashions arose and
turned their blazing rays full on these mar-

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velous growths, and because they were not
rooted in utility they withered away and
were sent to the junk shop or were given
to the poor. The soil was then ready for
another crop.

But better times came. Great thinkers
and teachers and artists, including the
founders of the Arts and Crafts movement,
began to concern themselves with the beauty
of the common things of life — with the
lesser arts. They taught people to consider
in the selection of house furnishings, not
only color and form and design, but also the
welfare of the maker arid the possibilities
of his development through his work. They
suggested that even the seller, the cleaner,
and the caretaker should be considered.
Those who listened to their teachings and
followed their example learned to plant
deep the desire for beauty in material sur-
roundings ; and because they knew that they
had much to learn and many lives to con-
sider, they adopted a form of house furnish- ^
ing whose chief characteristic was simplic-
ity. It was a tiny growth which was put
forth by those who had caught the spirit of

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90 HOME PROBLEMS

the Arts and Crafts movement, but it was
sturdy, and in time it grew large enough to
attract the attention even of the thoughtless.
They, being ever ready for something new,
looked upon the material output of the Arts
/and Crafts Societies, and, failing entirely to
appreciate the spirit lying back of the work,
seized upon simplicity as an end in itself.

The result was another prodigious growth
of house furnishings, this time very simple
ones. Thus simplicity, which in the mind
of William Morris stood for sincerity and
for beauty of life, became a mockery, being
manifested only in the outward fomi and
finish of articles that had been made under
conditions that had crushed out life and
hope and had damaged character. There
probably never was a greater travesty on a
righteous movement than much of the stuff
now sold as "Arts and Crafts" furniture.

And so simplification has become the
motto of the unthinking as well as of the
thinking, and is at present the butt of
the ridicule of the funny man, and threatens
to become as much of a stumbling-block to
the mind, if not to the feet, as the passion

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for decoration was a few years ago. For
this reason it seems fitting, in a series of
articles which deal with the home problem
in relation to the problem of more life for
all, to inquire whether simplification can be
the means of expanding life by increasing
beauty.

The greatest stumbling-block, perhaps,
which simplification has laid in our way is
the temptation to think of it as an end in
itself. This it never is and never can be.
The flowers, with their bewildering com-
plexity of structure; the birds, with their
brilliant plumage; the cathedrals of the Old
World, with their elaborate ornamentation,
laugh at the very suggestion. I may take
down curtains, because by so doing I can sit
in the house and watch the clouds float by,
or lie in bed and look at the stars, or get
time to make excursions to see the sun set
over the lake or the moon rise ; but that does
not necessarily mean that life would not be
richer with both the curtains and the natural
beauties. I may, feeling that I am not edu-
cated in form and in the principles of orna-
mentation, buy a table with straight and

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92 HOME PROBLEMS

absolutely plain legs, because I know that
such a table fulfills the first law of beauty
for articles of utility, that of fitness to pur-
pose, and because I prefer not to trust my
judgment further; but that does not mean
that a table of some other form and more
ornate might not serve its purpose as well
and be more pleasing to the eye. I may
select one kind of pottery in preference to
another infinitely more beautiful in form
and finish and decoration, because I know
that by buying the first I give some one a
chance to express himself and to gain
happiness and development through work,
while by buying the second I am simply
putting money into the pocket of some one
who is exploiting for gain the talents of
others. In each one of these cases the
simplification was not an end in itself, but
the result of recognizing and accepting a
limitation, arising in one case from lack
of time and energy, in another from lack of
knowledge, in another from unjust social
conditions.
J Since real, true, purposeful simplification
involves self-sacrifice, no person may force

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MORE BEAUTY FOR ALL 93

it upon another. Each person must decide
for himself, in the light of the conditions of
his own life, how much of the beauty which
appeals to the eye he ought to sacrifice for
the greater beauties of harmony and social
justice. One may, however, remind another
that simplification may bring with it beau-
ties of form, of color, and of design, as well
as those of lives in harmony with their social
environment.

Simplification in manner of life, in dress,
and in house furnishings may bring the
greatest of all material beauties — that of
the human form. One of the most melan-
choly sights in the world is that of a sallow,
wizened lady,befrizzled and befurbelowed.
When that same woman is set down amid
the bric-a-brac which has helped to wear
her out, the sight becomes pathetic as well
as melancholy. One cannot help wondering
what the effect would be if such a woman
should wear plain gowns and dispose of the
bric-a-brac, and spend the time saved in
lying out in the fresh air, and the saved
money on eggnogs and cream and cocoa and
other easily digested, fattening foods. It is

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94 HOME PROBLEMS

probable that if the modern tuberculosis
cure in all of its details respecting rest and
fresh air and sunlight and food should be
taken for six months by all the women who
could take it without sacrificing more than
the purchase of a spring suit or a pair of
curtains, the world's supply of beauty in the
form of bright eyes and pink cheeks and
rounded figures would be increased ten and
possibly a hundredfold.

i The increase of enjoyment of the beauties
of nature which comes with reduction of
care has been spoken of so often that in spite
of its importance it need not be again men-
tioned here. The reduction of care is not
the only way in which simplification brings
natural beauty, however. Plain, uncarved
woodwork and furniture reveal the natural
beauties of the wood. Unpolished surfaces
make it possible to have plants here, there,
ever5rwhere, on window sills or tables, wher-
ever they can be most often seen and most
easily cared for.

4 Next, simplification may lead to increase
in the beauty of house furnishings them-
selves. If we go through the house and

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MORE BEAUTY FOR ALL 95

challenge every article to prove that it is
worthy of its care — worthy to be taken
down and dusted three hundred and sixty-
five times every year or fifty-two times, as
the case may be — and dispose of all those
which do not pass muster, thus getting down
to rock bottom in our possessions, there are
likely to be two results. The first will be
the revelation of the uglinesses of the rock
bottom; the second will be time to learn
how to beautify it. And beauty in the rock
bottom — in floors and walls and in neces-
sary furniture — is very little trouble to
care for, and frequently destroys the crav-
ing for superficial decorations. By the use
of all sorts of ornaments we have blinded
ourselves to the possible structural beauty
of a room, a beauty due to proportion, and
to the proper placing of openings, and of
the necessary fixtures. Most of us need time
to study good architectural forms, and some
of us can get that time only by relieving
ourselves of the care of knickknacks.

Sometimes the removal of one article of
questionable beauty will bring to light
others that may be the source of esthetic

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96 HOME PROBLEMS

enjoyment. A table crowded in among
other pieces of furniture and covered with
a cloth may be ugly without any one's being
the wiser. If we uncover it and make it
stand out in bold relief its ugliness will
come to light. Under these circumstances,
however, we may discover that its outlines
are really beautiful, but are spoiled by
machine-turned trimmings. A little judi-
cious use of a saw or a plane, a little atten-
tion to the finish, and we may have a thing
of real beauty.

Finally, simplification gives us time to
study the conditions under which the arti-
cles in use in our home are made, sold, cared
for, and cleaned ; and the willingness to have
few things may make it possible to know
that those we have were made under condi-
tions that favored the health and happiness
of the maker, and that those who care for
them are neither overworked nor under-
paid. In the light of this knowledge the
barest and plainest of houses appears beau-
tiful, because it becomes the expression of
harmony between the life within and the
life without.

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MORE BEAUTY FOR ALL 97

Simplification, then, though not an end
to be sought for itself alone, may be the i^
means of elaborating life by increasing
the beauty of the human body, by bringing
in the beauties of nature, by inspiring us
to, and giving us time for, the study of the
principles of true art, and by bringing our
lives into sympathetic relations with other
lives.

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MORE PLEASURE

FOR THE PRODUCER OF

HOUSEHOLD STUFF

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MORE PLEASURE FOR

THE PRODUCER OF HOUSEHOLD

STUFF

MORE pleasure for the producer of
household stuff! And who is he or
she? He used to be the village cabinet
maker at work in a little shop, with a few
friends, making furniture for his neighbor's
use. She used to be the housewife working
at home, with her daughters, at spindle or
at loom, making tableCloths and napkins,
bed furnishings, and carpets for use in her
own family. Now the cabinet maker, hav-
ing deserted his little shop, has moved
up to town and become an employee in a
great manufacturing establishment; and the
housewife, having ceased entirely from pro-
ducing, is trying to content herself with
buying and with using. The producer of
household stuff today is neither housewife
nor village cabinet maker, but a factory
"hand."
The producer of old had pleasures of

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I02 HOME PROBLEMS

which the producer of the present knows
; not > He had the quiet and safety and
^ heaithiulness of a small shop. He had
common interest with fellow-workers and
apprentices in village politics or in church
affairs. Best of all, perhaps, there was a
personal quality in his work, because it was
done for friends or for acquaintances, and
an ever present sense of its importance, be-
cause it met needs which he had seen and
recognized and which his own manner of
life, similar to that of the consumer and on
the same social plane, prepared him to
understand. He had, for example, possibly
known for months that his neighbor was
saving money with which to hire him to
make the chest of drawers upon which he
was working, and there was a zest and a de-
light in his labor because he knew just how
much she needed the piece of furniture, just
where it was to stand, and just what purpose
it was to serve. The favorable conditions
of the work, the pleasant surroundings, the
personal quality of labor, the feeling of its
direct usefulness, were intensified in case of
the housewife who worked in her own house
with and for those she loved.

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER 1 03

Now conditions are different. The fac- i/^
tory hand spends his working day in a great,
dingy shop, with the maddening din of
machinery in his ears. His associates are
strangers, with whom he has little or nothing
in common besides his work. He labors
for an indefinite, far-away consumer whose
manner of life is unknown to him. He has
with this consumer neither the fellow-feel-
ing which comes from sharing life in the
same community, nor its only substitute,
the ability which comes from broad educa-
tion and from travel to project one^s self in
imagination across space and to put one's
self in the place of a stranger and to realize
his needs.

The industrial changes which have taken
from the producer a large part of his pleas-
ure in work have not, of course, been with-
out their compensating advantages. Of
these the chief, perhaps, has come to the
housewife, and consists in the opportunity .
to buy, ready made and at low cost, most of
the articles which it used to be necessary
for her to make at home. This advantage,
with its corollary, increased leisure, comes /

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I04 HOME PROBLEMS

to her, however, in her capacity as consumer
and not in that of producer. When we con-
sider the amount of pleasure which it is
possible to derive from one's own useful,
well-directed labor, compared with that
which comes from buying and using the
results of other people's work^we know

\/that the permanent suBsfTtution of the con-
sumer's advantage for the producer's joy in
labor cannot be a part of progress. If the
world is to move forward, the consumer's
leisure, which is the chief advantage of the
present system of production, must be made
the means of restoring the maker's pleasure
in his work.

Without attempting to analyze all the
changes which resulted in the worker's
present hapless condition, it may be said
that the loss of his joy in labor was directly
due to loss of sympathy between him and
the consumer of his wares. This loss of
.> sympathy was in turn due to a separation

' which was partly physical and partly spirit-
ual. The physical separation took place
when the producer went to live in a factory
town or in a city district devoted to manu-

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER 1 05

facturing interests, and when the consumer
sought refuge in a suburb or in a city dis-
trict boasting of its freedom from factories.
Ignorance on the part of each of the daily
life and needs of the other was the inevita-
ble consequence of this form of separation.
The separation in spirit took place when
the world divided itself sharply into two
groups — brain workers, on the one hand, ^
who joined themselves with the leisure
classes to form a consuming public ; and ^
manual laborers, on the other, who assumed
all the handwork of production. With the
difference in the character of work and the
loss of common interests and aims which
followed this division, there came an es-
trangement more profound than that which
mere distance has power to effect.

If the producer is again to have delight "^
in his work, sympathy between him and
the consumer must be restored. This will
never take place so long as the latter con-
tents himself with good-natured, patron-
izing expression of interest. The two
must again know the fellow-feeling which
can come only from sharing a common

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Io6 HOME PROBLEMS

life, common associations, and common
aspirations.

At present, when the workers are hud-
dling themselves together around the fac-
tories, and the buyers and users are with-
drawing themselves to country homes,
while part of the consuming public is ac-
tively hostile to the welfare of the producer,
while another part is indifferent, and while
still another part, though neither hostile nor
indifferent, is handicapped by poverty and
the pressure of daily needs, and almost com-
pelled to buy commodities in the cheapest
market, without reference to the conditions
of their production, it seems idle to talk
about restoring sympathy. And yet, in spite
of the apparent hopelessness of the present
/ situation, there is an occasional promising
^ sign which points to a better state of things
in the future.

Encouragement lies not so much in what
has already been accomplished as in cer-
tain conditions and circumstances which
provide that ever happy and hopeful com-
bination, the will and the way. The will is
shown in the growing disposition of the

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER IQfJ

home-maker, who of all consumers exer-
cises greatest control over the producer, to
assume responsibility not only for the one
who labors in her kitchen or sewing room,
but also for the one who works for her in
the far-off factory. The way has already
appeared in the rough in the form of lei-
sure, and it is interesting to note that cer-
tain changes which are taking place in soci-
ety are smoothing out the path and giving
the home-maker a fair chance of accom-
plishing something when she chooses to
devote her leisure to the effort to restore
sympathetic relations between the makers
and the users of household stuff.

The first condition of sympathy is knowl-
edge. The housekeeper used to get ac-
quainted with the one who made the articles
in use in her home naturally and in the
course of her ordinary daily occupations.
Now she can get acquainted only by an
effort independent of her regular work.
This effort must usually take the form of
reading and study. Here, of course, is
where the advantage of her new-found lei-
sure appears, but even the desire to leam

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Io8 HOME PROBLEMS

and the time in which to learn would avail
little if it were not for the fact that the
means of securing information are contin-
ually improving. The student of social
conditions has come out of his library and
is living among men as well as among books.
He is going down where the industrial war
is being waged most fiercely, and is gaining
at first hand knowledge concerning the toil-
ing masses. The information thus secured
he is giving to the public partly through his
college class work. There was a time, even
after colleges were opened to girls, when
knowledge so given would have been un-
available for the housekeeper. Now no one
is ever too old to go to school, and no
one feels out of place in school. But the
woman who cannot take systematic courses
in economics and sociology still has a chance
to learn. She can get information by resi-
dence in settlements, from books and peri-
odicals, and through summer assemblies
and university extension lectures. Thus the
will which is manifested in a quickened
social conscience is finding the way in im-
proved methods of spreading information.

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER 109

It is not, however, enough for the con-
sumer to know the producer. The latter*^
also must have opportunity to get ac-
quainted with the world for which he
labors. If he is to feel the usefulness of
his work he must have a good general edu-
cation and a broad outlook. These no boy
or girl has at the age of ten or even four-
teen, and few are able to obtain if taken
from school at that early age. The years of
childhood must, as Mrs. Kelley says, "be
held sacred to the work of education and
free from the burden of wage-earning." A
second hopeful sign of the times lies in the
fact that women are uniting in the effort
to extend and to enforce laws against child ^
labor and in favor of compulsory educa-
tion, and are striving to improve the public
school system and to adapt it to the needs
of the children of those whom we call "the
working classes."

But if children are to become intelligent
and joyful workers they must have good
physical and mental and moral inheritance
and good home care. They must have
healthy and wise mothers. Among the

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no HOME PROBLEMS

means of producing such mothers we may
' not include night work in factories for
women and girls, nor long hours of day
work, nor even short hours at certain harm-
ful and dangerous occupations. The inves-
tigations which are being made in the
United States at present into the conditions
of women's work are most significant. To
encourage such investigations and the legis-
lation for the protection of future mothers,
which will inevitably follow, is as much the
duty of the home-maker as to provide a
comfortable room for her household helper.
Her home profits by the work of women in
factories quite as much as it does by that
of domestic servants.

But second-hand information concerning
the toilers can lead to nothing further than
measures for the alleviation of their woes,
/if real fellow-feeling is to be restored, pro-
ducer and consumer must get acquainted
' through actual contact. They must share
the same life. This immediately suggests,
of course, life for the consumer under the
pall of factory smoke. But the conditions
under which commodities are made ought

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER III

not to be so hideous as they are. There is
no place too beautiful to be the workshop of
a human being. Our ideal for the future
must be for every man to have a little plot
of ground, and to live and to work where he
can say:

** Pm glad the sky is painted blue.

And the earth is painted green.

With such a lot of nice, fresh air

All sandwiched in between.**

When the producer finds a place like that,
the consumer will be glad to live next door
to him.

And is this an idle dream of a Utopia
beyond all possibility of realization? Well,
there is earth enough surely, and every day
the electric cars and telephones are making
it possible for us to spread out over the land
without getting out of communication with
the world. It may be possible for the pro-
ducer of the future to live next door to the
consumer without being very close to him.

Then half, at least, of the machinery
which makes the worker an undesirable
neighbor is unnecessary, whether we con-
sider his needs or the consumer's. From

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112 HOME PROBLEMS

the point of view of the latter, this unnec-
essary machinery is being used in manu-
facturing abominable trash, or in making
articles to take the place of others which
were badly made and faded or fell to pieces,
or wore out before their time. From the
point of view of the worker, much of our
modern machinery saves labor which it
would be life and health and happiness for
him to perform by hand. All the assistance
he needs from machinery is a little power to
take the place of his muscular energy and
to save his strength and vitality for brain
work. He wants a machine which shall be
his slave as he works out his designs into
useful and beautiful articles, not a tyrant
which he must "tend" all day long. A
small machine is a much better slave than
a big one. If the workers should spread
themselves out over the country with their
small machines, this would not mean the
sacrifice of any real good in the present sys-
tem. Improved methods of transmitting
power are making it possible for each com-
munity to have a central power plant from
which energy may be sent to run the seam-

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER II3

Stress's sewing machine, the carpenter's
lathe, the potter's wheel, and the rug-
maker's loom. Thus the present desire to
simplify life and the present dissatisfaction
with the flimsiness of the average factory-
made article, which create a demand for a
smaller and better product, combine with
improved means for transportation, for
communication, and for transmission of
power to make it practicable for small
workshops to take the place, to a certain
extent, of large factories, and to make it
possible for the producer of household
stuff to become a desirable neighbor.

The shops that are springing up all over
the country in connection with technical
schools show the advantages of labor under
good conditions. In addition to the stu-
dents' workrooms there is usually, in con-
nection with these schools, a shop where
men are employed to make furniture and
other articles for the institution. The de-
mands of instruction make it possible to
equip these shops with apparatus which
would otherwise be too costly. Such places
offer a man pleasant conditions for work,

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114 HOME PROBLEMS

a Stimulus to mental activity, and an oppor-
tunity to see the direct results of his labor.
I have in mind such a school and shop.
There, one day, the girls of the cooking
class served orange ice and rolled wafers
to the engineer and the carpenter. I felt
sure that, good as the ice and wafers were,
they tasted better to the carpenter because
they were passed on a tray he had made,
and to the engineer because he had made
the tins on which the wafers were baked.
There is a satisfaction in seeing the prod-
ucts of one's labor in actual use.

Another hopeful sign lies in the fact
that illustrated magazines which are pub-
lished in the interests of the Arts and Crafts
movement and of household decoration are
spreading knowledge of design and are
making it desirable to hire work done by
local cabinet makers. In the Northwestern
University Settlement, in Chicago, there is
good furniture, including a beautiful round
table for the reading room, which was
made in a small shop after designs fur-
nished by one of the residents.

It is not even enough, however, for the

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER II5

producer and consumer to come into con- ^
tact. They must have the same interests^
These common interests the manual train-
ing schools are supplying. Such schools
are training the children of the rich to
work with their hands. At the same time
they are offering an education of more
immediate practical value than was the
purely cultural education of old, and are
for this reason attracting the children of
the poor, who used to be put early to work.
The young people who are to be the manual
laborers of the future are getting their
apprenticeship under conditions which give
culture and general information. Thus the
technical school tends to destroy the class
distinction between brain workers and
hand workers.

There is, however, a suspicion that some
manufacturers, under the cloak of interest
in technical education, are advocating the
extension of manual training courses for
their own selfish purposes, rather than for
the general good; that they are seeking
to increase the number of skilled workers
among whom they may choose, and to make

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Il6 HOME PROBLEMS

themselves independent of labor organ-
*izations. It is fair to the labor organiza-
tions to hear both sides in this, as in other
matters where there seems to be a con-
flict of interests between employer and
employed. Through the Woman's Trade
Union League, which has branches in most
of our large cities, housekeepers may learn
the women workers' side as it is presented
by themselves.

There is encouragement also in the re-
vival of the handicrafts. A few people are
making articles of household utility because
they like the work. These people are liv-
ing examples of joy in labor. The move-
ment is important, also, because it tends to
the establishment of democratic relations.
Experience has shown that when a woman
whose connections have been entirely with
those who shared her ability to buy and to
spend becomes seriously interested in some
form of handiwork her whole manner of
life changes. She is no longer free to par-
ticipate in purposeless social functions. To
her studio teas she is likely to welcome
those who are working at her own or at

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PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER 1 17

similar crafts without reference to their
social position. Thus gradually and natu-
rally and without any sudden severing of
relationships she passes from the aristoc-
racy of those who have to the aristocracy
of those who do. It may be that in this ^
way real sympathy between classes is to be
restored.

In spite of hopeful signs, the great mass
of those who produce our household stuff /
still work under conditions which arrest /
bodily and mental development, shorten
life, and crush out happiness. There is
not enough encouragement in the present
situation to lull to inactivity any one who
is interested in the improvement of the
producer's conditions, but just enough to
prevent complete discouragement and to
suggest promising fields for future work
in the interest of those who make what
others use.

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MORE CONSCIENCE FOR
THE CONSUMER

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MORE CONSCIENCE FOR THE
CONSUMER

THE consumer is he who uses wealth.
Each of us, therefore, is a consumer.
The wealth which we use is of two classes.
The first includes natural products; the
second, those commodities which have
been made from natural products through
human agency. To the first class belongs
the wild berry which one picks for his own
use, and for which he is beholden to no one.
To the second belongs the cultivated berry,
which is served to one at his own table
without labor or forethought on his part.
The second berry may be considered to be
the first one plus the thought and ingenuity
and manual labor that were expended in
cultivating, transporting, and serving it.
Of the first kind of wealth, the average
consumer uses ever less, of the second ever
more, and thus his dependence upon his
fellows increases.
A person uses wealth for the purpose of

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122 HOME PROBLEMS

satisfying his desires. But other people
as well as he have desires, which must be
satisfied, if at all, by natural wealth or by
natural wealth adapted to human use by
human agency. Of unsatisfied desires the
world is full. Some, to be sure, are un-
worthy, but after we have stricken these
out, the number is still appalling. We
want food, and good food. Some of us go
hungry, and some get sick because we are
forced to eat bad food. We want safe
water, and thousands of us die every year
because we cannot get it. We want parks
or large open spaces, with good roads and
paths and plenty of comfortable seats, with
green grass, flowers, trees, playgrounds,
gymnasiums, and lunch rooms. We want
beautiful factories and public buildings,
good schools, and libraries. We want beau-
tiful houses, furniture, clothes. Of these
good things some of us have all, more of us
have only part, and many of us have none.
When we try to explain the fact that so
many legitimate desires are unfulfilled, the
first reason that occurs to us is the fact
that wealth is not fairly distributed. This

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CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER 1 23

no one can gainsay. No one pretends that
incomes are proportioned to desert, to need,
or even to men's capacity for using them
for the public good. This, however, is a
fact over which the average person has
little control. The most he can do is to give
moral support to the specialist who is trying
to think out a fairer means of distribution.
There is, however, another reason for
want, the responsibility for which comes
nearer home. This is the tremendous waste
involved in our present method of making
and distributing commodities. As a people
we seem to have little idea of measuring our
resources, our natural wealth, and the pro-
ductive power that lies in our hands and
brains up against our needs, and of using
them wisely and economically for the gen-
eral good. Although we understand the
relation between good food and physical
efficiency, we spend time and energy in col-
oring, adulterating, and otherwise sophis-
ticating wholesome, natural food materials.
We make numberless articles of the same
general character and of approximately the
same merit or demerit, and then we spend

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124 HOME PROBLEMS

enough energy exploiting them to feed all
the hungry in the land. We know the rela-
tion of clothing to health and to the de-
velopment of taste, and yet we multiply
many fold the amount of labor necessary
to clothe ourselves by making textile fabrics
which fade, shrink, and wear out prema-
turely. We need strong, skillful, intelligent
workers in every line of activity, and we
know that these can be produced only by
careful training and education ; and yet, in
some states, West Virginia, for example,
we send little boys as young as twelve into
the mines to work all day underground, and
we allow girls of the same age to work in
ill-ventilated shops, leaving them oftentimes
to find their way home after nightfall
through the worst districts of our great
cities.

But some one says : " I am not responsible.
I am the buyer and user, not the maker nor
the seller. I determine neither what shall
be made nor the conditions under which it
shall be made." To which the answer
comes in no uncertain accents from two
sources: from the shopkeeper, on the one

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CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER 1 25

hand, who says in the words so familiar
to us all, "There is no demand for it, so I
do not keep it in stock" ; and from the social
economist, on the other, who says, "The
producing man is essentially the servant of
the consuming man, and the final direction
of industry lies with the consumers."

If the consumers of wealth, by their de-
mands, determine what shall be made and
under what conditions it shall be made
and sold, what shall we say of the house-
wife and her responsibility? She holds a
unique position among consumers. She
buys not only that which she herself uses,
but much of that which the adult members
of her family, and all of that which her
young children consume. Thus she as-
sumes vicariously their responsibility and
holds their consciences. This is one of the
great social burdens which a woman takes
upon herself when she makes a home.

To understand the problem of the home-
maker, in her capacity as consumer and
buyer, we must remember that there are
"two distinct responsibilities. One is the re-
sponsibility for the conditions under which

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126 HOME PROBLEMS

things are made, the other is the responsi-
bility for their being made at all." The
first is for waste of life and productive
power through child labor, underpay, and
unsanitary places for work. This can be
met only by organized methods. The
second, the responsibility for the fact that
one article is made instead of another which
would have satisfied a larger number of
real wants, each home-maker must meet
individually by careful and conscientious
regulation of her own expenditures.

That some women have accepted the first
form of responsibility, the existence and
growth of the National Consumers' League,
with its various state and local branches,
testify. The object of this league is to in-
vestigate, as the individual can not, the
conditions under which articles are made.
Wishing to do thoroughly what it under-
takes, it is at present confining its attention
to one branch of industry, and that a branch
in which the waste of human life is con-
spicuous — "the manufacture of women's
and children's stitched white cotton under-
wear." This industry lends itself readily

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CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER 1 27

to sweatshop methods, with all the attend-
ant danger to the consumer from contagious
diseases, to the worker from the lowering
of wages and of the standard of living.

The way in which the league works may
be briefly described. Upon request of a
manufacturer it investigates his shop. If
it finds that the state factory law is obeyed,
that all goods are made on the premises,
that overtime is not worked, that no chil-
dren under sixteen are employed, and that
the surroundings of the workers are clean
and healthful, it grants the use of its label.
This label can, if the maufacturer so de-
sires, be stamped on all goods that leave his
factory.

The investigations of the league naturally
lead to activities of other kinds. It is often
found that the only objection to granting
the use of the label is the fact that children
under sixteen are employed. If this is in
accordance with the state factory law, the
next thing to do is to get the law changed.
This is usually the task which the state
leagues take upon themselves. The work
of these state leagues has recently been sum-

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128 HOME PROBLEMS

marized by the national league and pub-
lished in the form of a handbook, which
may be obtained from the headquarters in
New York City.

After the label has been granted, there
must be a market for the goods. The crea-
tion of a demand for label goods is one of
the duties of the local branches that are
springing up in many cities and towns.
Besides this, these branches prepare, in
some cities, for the convenience of pur-
chasers, "white lists" of shops which reach
certain standards with reference to wages
and to treatment of their employees. They
urge the granting of half holidays during
the summer months, and seek to save clerks
and delivery men from the horrors of the
Christmas trade by inducing people to do
their shopping early in the season and to
refuse to receive any goods delivered late
at night.

The members of the league recognize
the fact that their power to protect them-
selves and to clear their consciences with
reference to that which they use lies in
their ability to organize. They recognize

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CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER 1 29

also that below them is a class of buyers
too weak and too ignorant to band together
for the protection either of themselves or of
those who make and sell the grade of goods
which they use. A large part of its work,
therefore, is educational, and aims to bring
the public up to a point where it will de-
mand protection for all consumers and all
workers. To this end it distributes annu-
ally large quantities of valuable literature.

The league has been obliged lately to
turn much of its attention to the establish-
ment of the constitutionality of many of the
laws passed for the protection of women
and children. That great victory by which
the Oregon law limiting the hours of
women's labor was declared constitutional
by the Supreme Court of the United States
was won chiefly through its efforts. En-
couraged by this decision, it is renewing
its efforts in other states.

But in connection with the distribution
of household commodities, as well as in
connection with their production, there are
shameful wastes. In order to advertise
their wares, some manufacturers disfigure

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130 HOME PROBLEMS

towns and routes of travel with hideous bill-
boards, and injure or destroy natural beau-
ties. I stood on the platform of the station
at Harper's Ferry, one beautiful September
day, and looked across the river to a mag-
nificent bluflf crowned with autumn foliage.
There on the rocky face of the bluff had
been painted an enormous round advertise-
ment, with white letters nine feet high on
a background of black. It read, "Use
Blank's Talcum Powder." Blank's talcum
had up to that time been a household com-
modity with me. Since then, of course, I
have used other brands. But of what use
in combating an evil of this sort is my indi-
vidual protest except as a source of satis-
faction to myself, a revenge for the dis-
figurement of a favorite view? I am much
more effective as a member of the American
Civic Association, which is making organ-
ized warfare against the advertising evil,
than I am as a private protester and com-
plainer, even if I take no further part in
its work than to contribute my yearly dues.
In some such organized movement against
the evils connected with distribution house-

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CONSaENCE FOR THE C»NSUMER 13 1

keepers must join, if they are to meet their
full responsibility.

The home-maker, in her capacity as buyer
for a family, is largely responsible for that
which is made as well as for the conditions
under which it is made and the methods
employed in its distribution. Here she
must act single-handed, and decide for her-
self what it is worth while to buy. In one
section of his "Studies in Economics,"
William Smart draws a lesson from the
record of his personal expenses. The items
of the account he has grouped under various
heads — food, dress, shelter, etc. With ref-
erence to the various heads, he says that if
he spends more for food than he needs for
health he gives himself a form of pleasure
which he cannot share with others, and
which is of the most fleeting character. If,
on the other hand, he spends more for dress
than he actually needs for comfort, he
stands a chance of pleasing the eyes of others
as well as his own, and besides, an article of
dress discarded before it is worn out may
keep some one else warm for a long time.
Thus extravagance in dress is likely to give

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132 HOME PROBLEMS

pleasure to more people and for a longer
time than extravagance in food. The third
head is "shelter." If he puts more into
a house than he needs, he may be building
not only for the present, but for future
generations. Here he stops, leaving us to
go on in imagination through the other
heads, "books," "travel," etc. 'By this
simple illustration he shows to us poor lay-
men what he means by the rather appalling
title of his article, "The Socializing of Con-
sumption." For what is society but other
people, and what is it to socialize con-
sumption but to spend one's income for the
greatest good of the greatest number? The
choice between various forms of expendi-
ture comes when we spend more than
is absolutely necessary. Then we have a
chance to choose between that, which we,
by consuming, will destroy (ice cream, let
us say) and that which we can consume and
yet pass on to others (a book or periodical,
which we can read and lend to the neigh-
bors). And what we demand and use will
determine the form which wealth will take
in the future.

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CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER 1 33

But no one is going to be able to compare
what he needs to spend for a given item
and what he really does spend unless he
keeps a strict account. For this reason we
find specialists in home economics urging
women to keep accounts, and to keep them
in such form that they can easily be tabu-
lated so as to show what per cent of the
income goes for food, what for rent, etc. At
a home economics exhibit which was held
in connection with a meeting of the Associa-
tion of Collegiate Alumnae there was a
household cabinet arranged for keeping
records according to the card system. This
was filled with cards in actual use by a
woman interested in home economics.

No consideration of the duties of woman
s a consumer would be in any degree com-
plete without mention of her obligation to
train her children to the proper use of that
wealth which they have in common with
others. The wealth which we hold in com-
mon — public school buildings, parks, play-
grounds, museums, art galleries, streets, and
highways — is rapidly increasing. Children
must be trained to think of this wealth as

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134 HOME PROBLEMS

theirs, and of the obligation to protect it and
to use it well as theirs. They are too likely
to think of all the obligations connected
with it as belonging to a far-off, impersonal
government. They must be made to see that
the man who follows them about in the park
and picks up their peanut shells and cracker-
jack boxes might be making or tending a
swing for the delight of scores of children,
or a flower bed for the delight of hundreds.
They must be made to see that when they
pick out beautiful, sweet-smelling places
for picnics, and leave them strewn with
papers, tin cans, and watermelon rinds, they
are not only misusing their own property,
but are interfering with the rights of others
who have title to it also.

There is a way of using wealth which
impoverishes the world. There is another
way which enriches it. It is this second way
which the conscientious home-maker is ever
seeking to find and to show to her child.

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NEW WORK
FOR THE HOME

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NEW WORK FOR THE HOME

WE have considered the effect of s qgial,
i ndustrial, and political chang es
upon woman, upon man, upon the house-
hold employee,'upon the health and beauty
of the home, and upon the relations between
the producer and consumer of wealth. It
remains to ask how they are affecting the
home itself, considered as an institution.
Are they tending to cripple and destroy it,
or are they merely tending to modify its
external form and the ^^minutia of its daily
usages"? Or is there perhaps a third and
a better possibility that for the very reason I
that they are changing its form they are •
increasing its possibilities for social useful-
ness and for the enrichment of individual
lives?

These questions can be answered only in
the light of a clear distinction between the
spirit of home and the form of home, be-
tween the purpose that lies back of its vari-
ous activities and the material means which
137

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138 HOME PROBLEMS

it employs for the accomplishment of that
purpose. Tp spirit, the one essential is love .

T he love that leads fO the f nnnHi'ng ni mngt

ho mes has its ori f rin in and spring from
sex attraction, but crown s that purq ^y self-
regarding^ instinct with an unselfish desire
for thfiJKfilfare-^iftd-happtftess of its object.
The impulse may, however, come from the
love of parents who seek satisfactory means
of preparing the child for independent life,
or from the love of comrades who seek
mutual helpfulness in close association, or
from a love of broader application which
seeks to provide a meeting place for those
of like interests and aspirations. Something
there must be of other- regarding affection,
or the spirit is wanting.

Of this unselfish affection home is the
expression, and all those materiaPthings
which^e are in the habit of associating
with the home are the tooTs of the expres-
sion. Roofs and walls, furniture and dishes,
may or may not be^art of home. Theyare
such only when they represent some one's
affectionate desire to secure for another the
good things of life.

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NEW WORK FOR THE HOME 1 39

Since h oine is an expression of affectio n,
and not a means of making one's self com-
fortable and happy, it follows that it ap-
proaches the ideal in proportion as love is
strong and is successfully expressed \ When
one loves another very much, he desires that
that other person may attain to complete-
ness of life, and seeks to assist him to make
full use of all the means at hand and to over-
come, as far as possible, all those obstacles
which are due to his natural endowment,
or to his environment, and which lie be-
tween him and success. Men especially
seem to forget that by means of their homes
they can do more than protect their wives
and shield them from hardship; that they
can give them positive assistance in making
the most of themselves and of their powers.
This is what the intimate association that
the home offers is for. (if the home^does not
offer the opportunity for m utual under-
standing, it is a failure; but if it does not
add mutual helpfulness, in the broadest
sense, to mutual understanding, it iS a worse
failure; and it is frequently upon the ex-
ternal form of the home that its possibilities
for such helpfulness depend.

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I40 HOME PROBLEMS

Since the chief factor in determining the
form of home is the need of the opportunity
for close and intimate and helpful associa-
tion, we may disregard the popular fear that
the home will finally take upon itself the
characteristics of a public institution, and
will cease to offer facilities for private
family life. Human intelligence, which
suits means to ends, and which is ever com-
ing to the aid of human affection, will pre-
vent that. So long as affection lasts it will
seek satisfactory expression in home life,
and so long as intelligence endures it will
stand in the way of the extension of the
borders of the home beyond the possibilities
of the mutual helpfulness to its members.

If home is to be a perfect expression of
affection, it must no t only provide the op -
portunity for close association^ but it must.
also from time_ to time adjust JtnHf and ifn
a ctivities jo the opportuniti es whirh sori-
ety ^fiFerTlo men and to women in fielHs ,
uncon nected_ with tf^ff hn"^^l^^^^ If the
home^aking^ either man or woman is to
be satisfactory, it must not interfere unnec-
essarily or arbitrarily with the outside work

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NEW WORK FOR THE HOME 141

that is offered to the other partner in home-
making enterprise. This rule affects man's
home-making at present more than it does
woman's, for her opportunities are multi-
plying more rapidly than his, and they must
be taken into account by him. At present,
woman's life differs from man's not so much
in the variety of occupations that are open
to her as in the extent to which the home
interferes with these occupations. Part of
this interference is, of course, inevitable,
being conjjgfted with the bearing and rear-
ing of children; but part is avoidable, being
connected with details of housekeeping
which might be entrusted to specialists. If
all women except professional housekeepers
were relieved of the tasks of cooking and
cleaning, or of the superintendence of such
work, the external form of the average home
would be somewhat radically changed.^
Much less of its space would be given to
kitchen and laundry, and it would be/
planned to accommodate fewer industries.
In this form, however, it might offer even
more facilities for family life than it does
now, and even larger opportunities for

\i^

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142 HOME PROBLEMS

close association and mutual helpfulness. It
might, too, offer to man a better chance
than he has at present to express his love
for his wife by helping her to take advan-
tage of the opportunities offered to her out-
side of the home, and to add the pleasures
of the cultivation and use of special talents
to the joys of home and of family life.

But we have said that the h ome must at v
any gi ven time provide t hose m aterial and
c reature comforts whicn tne mdividual ran-
n ot^secure through other channel g^ Because
of their recognition and acceptance of this
fact, women are doing and will probably
continue for a long time to do work of
which they might be relieved. It is com-
mon to think of this work as necessary be-
cause of the mechanical difficulties lying
in the way of public housekeeping for the
benefit of private home-making. As a
matter of fact, most of the difficulties of
this kind have been removed. Food can be
prepared satisfactorily in much larger
quantities than it is in private houses. This
is proved by the quality of the food that is
served in first-class hotels, restaurants, and

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NEW WORK FOR THE HOME 1 43

clubs. There is a greater cleanliness than
that of private homes. This is proved by
the fact that surgeons insist upon perform-
ing operations in hospitals, where the clean-
ing is done by specialists under expert
direction. A few problems, those involved
in the satisfactory transportation of cooked
food, for example, remain to be solved, but
these seem small when considered in con-
nection with the inventive skill shown in
other industrial enterprises. The real diffi-
culty in the way is, of course, social rather
than mechanical. There seems no doubt
that by general agreement among the house-
keepers of a given community to avail them-
selves more largely than at present of the
results of modern industrial development,
radical changes could be made in the form
of the home and in its activities without
decreasing the comfort and enjoyment of
home life.

Perhaps the only real danger to the home
lies in the fact that women, who are its
natural protectors, are not free to control
the industrial changes which affect it, and
that these changes are being determined

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144 HOME PROBLEMS

too largely by commercial interests. Ex-
perience has shown that women have had
only a passive part in the removal of indus-
tries from the home, and that business enter-
prises have had a very active part. It has
shown, also, that these changes have not
been followed as speedily as they should
have been by legislation necessary for the
control of the industries under their new
conditions. How slowly, for example, the
Pure Food Law followed the factory
method of preparing foods! Women must
be freer to work in the interest of the home
and of the children. They must be free
from unnecessary labor and care within the
home, and able to work for it in public;
they must be free economically, and able to
control their own incomes and to make ex-
periments for themselves in new methods
of housekeeping; they must be free polit-
ically, and able to control, by means of the
ballot, public methods of preparing and
transporting food, of caring for streets, of
educating children, and of doing other work
which affects the welfare of the home.
[Present conditions in the home seem to

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NEW WORK FOR THE HOME 1 45

demand that women must have greater and
not less freedom in its service, greater
and not less power for use in its protection;
and so long as love and intelligence last,
they may be expected to use added freedom
and added power for the benefit of family
life. They may be expected to do more and
not less work for the home by adding to
their work for it in private a public work
demanded by its changed position. J

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