Part 3

The reasons are manifold why the university does not as yet investigate the household, although every other field of human knowledge and activity has apparently been taken into its libraries, its laboratories, and its workshops; but undoubtedly one of the weightiest is the survival of the tradition that affairs of the household concern only women, that women work always through instinct and intuition, and therefore that the household is not a suitable field for scientific investigation. But with the breaking down of the artificial barriers between the interests of men and of women, it is found that the affairs of the household do concern every member of it. Modern investigations in psychology are showing that the mental processes of women are precisely the same as those of men. It therefore remains for the university to recognize that the household is worthy of investigation. That there is scope for such an inquiry would seem evident from the curriculum of an excellent school of domestic science, selected from among hundreds of other illustrations that might be given. Course I in Domestic Science places in conjunction lectures on food adulteration, bacteriology, furniture, decorations, textiles, and housekeeping in other lands--an enumeration not saved even by alphabetical arrangement.

But not only is there difficulty in deciding what should be included under the head of domestic science and how instruction in it should be given, but a third difficulty lies in deciding who should be instructed in the subject. If it is said that all young women should receive such instruction, we are confronted by the fact that the young woman trained for domesticity takes up stenography and occupies a hall bedroom, or becomes a commercial traveler and spends her life in hotels and on railway trains; the girl taught sewing and cooking in the public school goes into the shop or the factory; the young woman who frankly acknowledges her engagement spends the time prior to her marriage in preparing her trousseau and in embroidering her initials on her household linen. The young woman who has prepared herself for the profession of law or of medicine decides to marry and goes into business partnership with her husband. It would seem as if all plans for teaching household economics in the college or in the public school with reference to preparing young women for their future careers as housekeepers must be futile until the orbit of the matrimonial comet can be predicted.

Yet it must be recognized that college education has already done much for the household, and presumably for that somewhat vague field denominated “domestic science.”

The housekeeper finds herself in the same position as does the lawyer, the physician, and the clergyman. All are educated side by side throughout a college course. In a subsequent professional career, the lawyer forgets his Greek, the physician his history, and the clergyman his mathematics; but there remains with each one a precipitate of far more value than the original compound. The lawyer is no longer able to conjugate a verb in μι, but his Greek has given him an accuracy and precision of thought that, other things being equal, has placed him professionally far in advance of his untrained associates. The physician has forgotten the various steps in the development of cabinet government in England, but his history has left him a ready sympathy in dealing with men and a vision into their future that will long outlive his knowledge of the facts of history. The clergyman can no longer demonstrate Sturm’s theorem or Horner’s method, but his mathematics has given him a clearness of reasoning that renders him an invincible opponent in all battles for the right. In all these cases the residuum of facts remaining from a college education is comparatively small. Knowledge that is not constantly used passes out of mind, yet, like the food assimilated by the physical body, it serves its purpose in the mental strength and energy gained through it. Indeed, it may be said that information becomes more and more the dross, and education the pure metal remaining from a general school or college training.

The embryo lawyer, the physician, the clergyman, have throughout a college course been pursuing parallel courses of training; it has given them little that they can make of immediate use in the office or the study, but it has laid the foundation for that special research necessary in every profession. The professional school builds on the training of the college, and it not only gives the information necessary in a professional career, but it opens the door to the vast field of investigation which it is one of the aims of every professional man to explore.

Thus the housekeeper, forgetting her Latin, Greek, and mathematics, her French, German, and history, her biology, astronomy and economics, retains as the most valuable heritage of her education a training in habits of accuracy, observation, good judgment, and self-control that enables her to be the master of any unexpected situation that may arise. From the beginning of school life until the close of the college course the conditions surrounding the young man and the young woman are similar. Each has the benefit of all the information and the general educational training the college can give. To each alike the three great professions of law, medicine, and theology open their doors and invite special study and investigation. But if the young woman, turning her back on these attractive fields of work, desires to study the household in a similar professional way, she finds it a _terra incognita_. She realizes that absolutely nothing has been done in any educational institution toward investigating its past history, its present conditions, or its future needs. It is said in another field that every lawyer owes a debt of gratitude to his profession which can be paid only by some personal contribution to the sum of knowledge in his profession. One of his aims, therefore, as is that of every professional man, is to leave the world richer in his own field through the investigation of its unexplored parts. Thus law, medicine, and theology grow by virtue of the accumulated wisdom of those engaged in their pursuit. But the housekeeper finds that housekeeping as a profession has made no advances. It has not grown through the accumulated wisdom of past generations as have the so-called learned professions. Whatever advances it has made have come from impetus given it by other occupations through their own progress. Housekeeping affairs have been passive recipients of general progress, not active participants in it.

If, then, domestic science is to be made a subject of serious study and is to be accorded a permanent place in the school curriculum, if the household is to profit by the educational progress of the day, it can only be after the university has taken the initiative and has made all matters pertaining to the house and home a subject of scientific research.

THE RELATION OF COLLEGE WOMEN TO DOMESTIC SCIENCE

In a Western city, somewhat addicted to the formation of literary clubs and reading-circles, is a company of women who meet for the study of history, closing the afternoon’s work with a discussion of current events. In alluding to these discussions, a member once said, “No matter what subject is introduced, we always drift off to the woman question.” The half-jesting remark has in it more of wisdom than of criticism. The so-called “woman question” is not, as was once popularly supposed, synonymous either with woman suffrage or with the higher education of woman--it is as broad and as deep as the thoughts and activities of woman. It was inevitable that for many years efforts should be made to open new occupations to women, to give them better preparation for their work, and to secure fair remuneration for service well done. It was inevitable, because, however much some sociologists may wish it otherwise, the fact remains that woman is and must be to a certain extent a wage-earner. These efforts have been reasonably successful; almost every avenue of work is open to women, and almost every coveted opportunity for preparation is hers. The reaction, however, has come, and the pertinent question is being asked, “Why has so little been done to improve the work of woman in those fields which have always without question been considered legitimately hers?”

A glance at our periodical literature does indeed show unusual interest in all questions affecting domestic life. Economists are asking why the wages paid for domestic service are higher than those paid the average woman in other occupations, and why, in spite of this, the demand for household workers is greater than the supply. Philanthropists are puzzled to know why girls prefer to live in crowded tenement-houses on the merest pittance rather than enjoy many of the comforts of home life as a household employee. Experienced housekeepers find life a burden when it becomes necessary to change the divinity who rules the kitchen or the nursery, and wonder why it is so difficult to secure efficient help. Educated women without homes who desire to learn the principles of domestic science can find no explanation for the fact that the United States with its hundreds of thousands of schools affords scarcely one where this subject can be studied as a serious profession as is law, medicine, or theology. None of these questions has been satisfactorily answered. The editor who discourses of “half-baked writers on political economy” settles one of them by saying that there is no reason whatever why women should dislike domestic service. But the autocratic assertion has not visibly increased the number of women desiring employment as house-servants. The benevolent individual who has not yet learned that thousands of girls have neither mothers nor homes, blandly answers another of these questions by saying, “Let girls learn housekeeping at home.” The world at large cuts the gordian knot and says, “It is an unfortunate condition of affairs, but we cannot reform all evils at once.”

Before considering the relation that college women sustain to the general subject of domestic science, it must be noted that the subject is one of general interest.

It is of interest to all women, because so large a proportion of them marry and become actively engaged in housekeeping; the number of married women who do not keep house is possibly equaled by the number of unmarried women who do. Moreover, the majority of women whose primary occupation is not housekeeping are at various times called upon to spend a portion of their time in household duties. It is of interest to all men, whether they have a full appreciation of it or not, because all questions affecting the house and the home are so inextricably bound up with all questions of life.

It must be assumed at the outset that there is a necessity for improvement in the conduct of household affairs. As the household is at present organized, the duties of the housekeeper are multifarious. The ideal housekeeper must have a knowledge of culinary affairs. Not only must she know how to make food palatable, but she must understand its nutritive and its economic value. She must be able to superintend the cutting and making of ordinary garments. She must understand the over-sight of her household employees; the details of marketing; the principles of laundry work; the keeping of household accounts; the care of the sick. She must know how to care for the house and all of its furniture, from attic to cellar. She must be master of all these special lines of work, and know a thousand and one things about the household not enumerated. She must not only be the housekeeper, but the homekeeper. She must furnish her house with taste, and often at the same time with economy. She should understand the principles of the kindergarten, and not shrink from applying the fundamental ideas of ethics and psychology to the training of children. She must at all times be ready to perform her social obligations in the circle in which she moves.

It is generally assumed that the only preparation necessary to become proficient in these multiform tasks is found in the instinctive love of domestic life common to all women. But this of itself does not make a woman a successful housekeeper any more than a taste for medicine renders a young man a skillful surgeon, or a talent for law constitutes a learned jurist. There has been a growing recognition of this fact, but at the same time it is said that the home training of every girl ought to be sufficient. There are many reasons why this is not so. If we apply the principles to the case of girls who become household employees, it is seen to be at fault. It is from the ranks below the so-called middle class, to use an invidious phrase, that the great army of household employees is recruited. It is impossible for a girl belonging to this class to go into a family whose social advantages have been greater than her own, and become at once an adept in the conventional forms of table service, an expert cook, or a good general houseworker. She has had neither the means, nor the opportunity, to gain even a knowledge of what duties will be required of her, to say nothing of knowing how to perform them. An incompetent mistress is unable to give the necessary instructions; a competent one has often neither the time nor the patience to undertake such training, and indeed it ought not to be expected of her any more than it is supposed that a banker who desires an expert accountant will teach the applicant the process of addition and subtraction.

If, on the other hand, it is assumed that the home training in domestic affairs is sufficient for girls of the middle and upper classes, there is also danger of error. It is often quite as difficult to give regular instruction in the home in these matters as it is in the ordinary school branches. The Law School of the University of Michigan, after thirty years’ experience, said a few years since in regard to the previous reading of law: “It is not often that the student receives the needed assistance except in law schools. The active practitioner, engrossed with the care of business, cannot, or at least, as proved by experience, does not, furnish the students who place themselves in his charge the attention and assistance essential to give a correct direction to their reading, and to teach them to apply it usefully and aptly in their subsequent professional life.” This same principle too often applies in regard to housework, even when the teacher is the mother. The most competent mothers often have the most incompetent daughters--it is far more easy to do the work than to teach another how to do it. Sometimes it is assumed that the daughter can learn, as the mother has learned, by the hard road of experience. It is, also, too often a question of how the blind shall lead the blind. Again, many girls are early left without homes, and thus deprived of the opportunity.

There are evidences of some appreciation of these facts. Cooking-schools spring up spasmodically, where in “ten easy lessons” the mysteries of theoretical and practical cooking are disclosed. Some of our fashionable boarding-schools, ever on the alert to foresee a public demand, announce courses in domestic science. Charity schools in our larger cities attempt to teach girls cooking and sewing in connection with arithmetic and grammar. The great interest in industrial education has had its influence. In some cities cooking and sewing have been made a part of the required work in all the public schools, not so much, however, from a desire to teach these branches as from a belief that the hand as well as the brain needs training. New York is the home of the kitchen-garden, where the thought of the originator has been to teach the children of the poorer classes how to make their own homes brighter, rather than to train them to do housework for remuneration. In many of our large cities schools have been established to give domestic training, but this training, unfortunately, is often given more in name than in reality. All these forms of activity are indications of a desire to help lessen, wholly or in part, the widespread ignorance of domestic work and aversion to it.

Several reasons for this ignorance have already been suggested. Housework has always been classed in the category, not of skilled but of unskilled labor. Nor has it in every-day business life received that practical consideration which the ponderous volumes on the influence of woman would lead one to expect. Popular sentiment has not yet demanded that when a woman marries she shall possess at least a theoretical if not a practical knowledge of household science; it is deemed sufficient if she acquire it after marriage at an enormous cost of time, patience, energy, sometimes even of domestic happiness. Nor has public opinion demanded that every woman who does not marry should have a general knowledge of domestic affairs; it is assumed that she has no use for such knowledge, either practically or as an accomplishment.

When popular opinion insists that every woman who marries shall have a practical familiarity with these subjects as strongly as it insists that every man who marries shall be able to provide a comfortable home for a wife; when public opinion insists that every woman, whether she marries or not, shall have an education so symmetrical that she can fulfill any duty which as an individual she may be called upon to perform, then will more serious efforts be made toward lessening this ignorance.

This lack of knowledge explains to a certain extent why so many are unwilling to perform household work. It is natural to dislike work that brings failure, to enjoy what brings success. The average girl who “hates to sew” and “hates to do housework” would often find pleasure in both did she but have systematic knowledge concerning the work. The city boarding-house, crowded with women who “can’t endure housekeeping,” is one product of this combination of ignorance and aversion. In New York City there are said to be but thirteen thousand families in individual houses. The rest of the population are crowded into tenements, rookeries, boarding-houses, flats, and hotels.

But there are other reasons besides ignorance that explain this aversion to household work. There is a well-founded belief that the majority of women dislike both manual labor and self-supporting labor, and this fact applies both to housekeeper and to housemaid. We have passed the stage when it is permitted a man to say, “The world owes me a living.” We not only allow a woman to say this in effect, but we sometimes praise her for her womanliness in saying it. How often one hears the remark, “Her father has abundant means, it is unnecessary for her to support herself.” The average woman without family cares is self-supporting because dire necessity compels, not because honorable work is the birthright inheritance of every human being. Again, the mistress of the household constantly speaks of the routine work of the house as drudgery, and the houseworker, whose chief interest in it is one of dollars and cents, coins a still harsher term, and calls work a curse.

This ignorance and aversion are too widespread, and have existed too many centuries to be removed in a single generation, nor can we expect any one remedy to prove a panacea. But we may ask how far the efforts made have proved successful. The cooking-school is now in vogue, and doubtless has done much to teach new ways of preparing food, but the cooking-school has the same relation to the general subject of household science that an evening class in arithmetic has to a college education. The mistress learns a few things in a general way, and the maid does not care to learn at all. It is ephemeral in its nature, and while it attracts public attention to the need of more thorough instruction on the subject, it is far from going to the root of the question, even of how to teach cooking. The same may be said in general of domestic economy in our fashionable schools. Sewing and cooking as taught in charity schools do apparently give practical help in teaching the children of the poor to assist in the care of their own homes; but this work, like that done in the public schools on the same lines, distinctly disclaims any desire to give technical information. In the public schools the object of instruction in sewing and cooking is purely an educational one, and it is an incidental result scarcely to be expected when it leads girls to look upon housework as a means of support.

It has long been a belief with many, and one that it has been most difficult to give up, that schools for the training of domestic servants would do more than anything else to solve the domestic service problem, and thus indirectly provide for the overflow in shops and factories. In all of our large cities the experiment has apparently been faithfully tried. The theory has seemed unexceptionable, labor and expense have not been spared to carry it out, but the result has been, if not an utter failure, at least far from commensurate with the effort expended. In one school personally visited accommodations for twenty were found. When asked what was done in case there were more than twenty applicants for membership in the class, the superintendent replied that no such difficulty ever arose, as their numbers were never full. The answer was at least significant.

In one city the Women’s Guild organized cooking-classes with the thought of domestic service in mind. In a demonstration course where only ten cents a lesson was charged, the average attendance was never more than fifteen or sixteen, the greatest number ever attending being thirty-two. In a course of practical lessons in cooking, given at equally reasonable rates, the class numbered only four or five. One of the most efficient managers of such schools says after twenty-five years of experience that she is forced to believe that nothing in this line can be done. Similar testimony comes from a gentleman of wide practical knowledge of philanthropic work in New York City, and on the theoretical side from a lady widely known for her writings on economic subjects. Miss Mary Rankin Hollar has recently investigated one hundred schools and classes where domestic training is supposed to be given. She finds that less than ten per cent give systematic work, and only two have any maids in their classes.[10] In the light of these and of similar facts the conclusion must be accepted that the question cannot, certainly at present, be settled by establishing training-schools for employees, no matter how thoroughly equipped or how reasonable in charges these schools may be. The conclusion seems to be that all these efforts, from fashionable cooking-school to charity kitchen-garden, have not been able to remove, scarcely to lessen, either ignorance or prejudice.

The average housekeeper does not yet know the best, the easiest, the most practical, or the most scientific way to manage her household affairs. Her work is often monotonous and wearisome, and must be so until its true place as a profession is acknowledged. The inexperienced housekeeper recognizes her own likeness only too faithfully drawn by Dickens in Bella and her struggles with “The Complete British Housewife.” If she desires instruction, she finds it impossible to secure it in a systematic way. Kind friends offer suggestions, the cook-book gives hints, and the “Housekeepers’ Guide” bridges over a temporary difficulty. But this combination of instruction in regard to isolated facts in housekeeping is much like the attempt to learn a new language by memorizing words from the dictionary.