THE SINGLE WOMAN
Her Freedom. Culture a desideratum in her choice of work. Daughters as
assistants of their fathers. In law. In medicine. As scientific farmers.
Preparation for speaking or writing. Steps in the career of a
journalist. The editor. The Advertising writer. The illustrator.
Designing book covers. Patterns.
CHAPTER II
THE SINGLE WOMAN
Teaching. Teaching Women in Society. Parliamentary law. Games.
Book-reviewing. Manuscript-reading for publishers. Library work.
Teaching music and painting. Home study of professional housework.
The unmarried daughter at home. The woman in business. Her relation
to her employer. Securing an increase of salary. The woman of
independent means. Her civic and social duties.
CHAPTER III
THE WIFE
Nature's intention in marriage. The woman's crime in marrying for
support. Her blunder in marrying an inefficient man for love.
The proper union. Mutual aid of husband and wife. Manipulating a husband.
By deceit. By tact. Confidence between man and wife.
CHAPTER IV
THE HOUSE
Element in choice of a home. The city apartment. Furniture for a
temporary home. Couches. Rugs. Book-cases. The suburban and country
house. Economic considerations. Buying an old house. Building a new one.
Supervising the building. The woman's wishes.
CHAPTER V
THE HOUSE
Essential parts of a house. Double use of rooms. Utility of piazzas.
Landscape gardening. Water supply. Water power. Illumination. Dangers
from gas. How to read a gas-meter. How to test kerosene. Care of lamps.
Use of candles. Making the best of the old house.
CHAPTER VI
FURNITURE AND DECORATION
The qualities to be sought in furniture. Home-made furniture. Semi-made
furniture. Good furniture as an investment. Furnishing and decorating
the hall. The staircase. The parlor. Rugs and carpets. Oriental rugs.
Floors. Treatment of hardwood. Of other wood. How to stain a floor
covering.
CHAPTER VII
FURNITURE AND DECORATION
The carpet square. Furniture for the parlor. Parlor decoration. The
piano. The library. Arrangement of books. The "Den." The living-room.
The dining-room. Bedrooms. How to make a bed. The guest chamber.
Window shades and blinds.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MOTHER
Nursing the child. The mother's diet. Weaning. The nursing bottle.
Milk for the baby. The baby's table manners. His bath. Cleansing
his eyes and nose. Relief of colic. Care of the diaper.
CHAPTER IX
THE MOTHER
The school child. Breakfast, Luncheon, Supper. Aiding the teacher
at home. Manual training. Utilizing the collecting mania. Physical
exercise. Intellectual exercise. Forming the bath habit. Teething.
Forming the toothbrush habit. Shoes for children. Dress. Hats.
CHAPTER X
CARE OF THE PERSON
The mother's duty toward herself--Her dress. Etiquette and good manners.
The Golden Rule. Pride in personal appearance. The science of beauty
culture. Manicuring as a home employment. Recipes for toilet
preparations. Nail-biting. Fragile nails. White spots. Chapped hands.
Care of the skin. Facial massage. Recipes for skin lotions. Treatment
of facial blemishes and disorders. Care of the hair. Diseases of the
scalp and hair. Gray hair. Care of eyebrows and eyelashes.
CHAPTER XI
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COOKING
The prevalence of good receipts for all save meat dishes. Increased
cost of meat makes these desirable. No need to save expense by giving
up meat. The "Government Cook Book." Value of the cuts of meat.
CHAPTER XII
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COOKING
Texture and flavor of meat. General methods of cooking meat. Economies
in use of meat.
CHAPTER XIII
RECIPES FOR MEAT DISHES
Trying out fat. Extending the flavor of meat. Meat stew. Meat dumplings.
Meat pies and similar dishes. Meat with starchy materials. Turkish
pilaf. Stew from cold roast. Meat with beans. Haricot of mutton. Meat
salads. Meat with eggs. Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Corned beef
hash with poached eggs. Stuffing. Mock duck. Veal or beef birds.
Utilizing the cheaper cuts of meat.
CHAPTER XIV
RECIPES FOR MEAT DISHES
Prolonged cooking at low heat. Stewed shin of beef. Boiled beef with
horseradish sauce. Stuffed heart. Braised beef, pot roast, and beef a la
mode. Hungarian goulash. Casserole cookery. Meat cooked with vinegar.
Sour beef. Sour beefsteak. Pounded meat. Farmer stew. Spanish beefsteak.
Chopped meat. Savory rolls. Developing flavor of meat. Retaining natural
flavors. Round steak on biscuits. Flavor of browned meat or fat. Salt
pork with milk gravy. "Salt-fish dinner." Sauces. Mock venison.
CHAPTER XV
HOUSEHOLD RECIPES
Various recipes arranged alphabetically.
INTRODUCTION
What a tribute to the worth of woman are the names by which she is
enshrined in common speech! What tender associations halo the names of
_wife, mother, sister_ and _daughter!_ It must never be forgotten
that the dearest, most sacred of these names, are, in origin, connected
with the dignity of service. In early speech the wife, or wife-man (woman)
was the "weaver," whose care it was to clothe the family, as it was the
husband's duty to "feed" it, or to provide the materials of sustenance.
The mother or matron was named from the most tender and sacred of human
functions, the nursing of the babe; the daughter from her original duty,
in the pastoral age, of milking the cows. The lady was so-called from the
social obligations entailed on the prosperous woman, of "loaf-giving,"
or dispensing charity to the less fortunate. As dame, madame, madonna,
in the old days of aristocracy, she bore equal rank with the lord and
master, and carried down to our better democratic age the co-partnership
of civic and family rights and duties.
Modern science and invention, civic and economic progress, the growth
of humanitarian ideas, and the approach to Christian unity, are all
combining to give woman and woman's work a central place in the social
order. The vast machinery of government, especially in the new
activities of the Agricultural and Labor Departments applied to
investigations and experiments into the questions of pure food,
household economy and employments suited to woman, is now directed more
than ever before to the uplifting of American homes and the assistance
of the homemakers. These researches are at the call of every housewife.
However, to save her the bewilderment of selection from so many useful
suggestions, and the digesting of voluminous directions, the fundamental
principles of food and household economy as published by the government
departments, are here presented, with the permission of the respective
authorities, together with many other suggestions of utilitarian
character which may assist the mother and housewife to a greater
fulfillment of her office in the uplift of the home.
CHAPTER I
THE SINGLE WOMAN
Her Freedom--Culture a Desideratum in Her Choice of Work--Daughters
as Assistants of Their Fathers--In Law--In Medicine--As Scientific
Farmers--Preparation for Speaking or Writing--Steps in the Career
of a Journalist--The Editor--The Advertising Writer--The
Illustrator--Designing Book Covers--Patterns.
She, keeping green
Love's lilies for the one unseen,
Counselling but her woman's heart,
Chose in all ways the better part.
BENJAMIN HATHAWAY--_By the Fireside._
The question of celibacy is too large and complicated to be here
discussed in its moral and sociological aspects. It is a condition that
confronts us, must be accepted, and the best made of it. Whether by
economic compulsion or personal preference, it is a fact that a large
number of American men remain bachelors, and a corresponding number of
American women content themselves with a life of "single blessedness."
It is a tendency of modern life that marriage be deferred more and more
to a later period of maturity. Accordingly the period of spinsterhood is
an important one for consideration. It is a question of individual
mental attitude whether the period be viewed by the single woman as a
preparation for possible marriage, or as the determining of a permanent
condition of life. In either case the problem before her is to choose,
like Mr. Hathaway's heroine, "the better part."
The single woman has an advantage over her married sister in freedom
of choice, of self-improvement, and service to others. Says George Eliot
of the wife, "A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts."
The "bachelor girl," on the other hand, has virtually all the liberty
of the man whom her name indicates that she emulates.
To the unmarried woman, especially the one who may subsequently marry,
education in the broad sense of self-culture and development is of
primary importance. The question of being should take precedence over
doing, although not to the exclusion of the latter, for character is
best formed by action. But all her studies, occupations, even her
pastimes, should be pursued with the main purpose of making herself
the ideal woman, such an one as Wordsworth describes, one with:
"The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light."
It is an obviously true, and therefore a trite observation, that no one,
woman or man, should consider that education (using the term broadly)
stopped with graduation from school or college. But the statement that
a grown person who has not settled down to some particular life work,
such as is often the case with a young unmarried woman, should continue
at least one serious _study,_ will not be so generally accepted or
acceptable. Yet in no other way may that mental discipline be obtained
which is necessary to the mature development of character. Neglect to
cultivate the ability to go down to the root of a subject, to observe
it in its relations, and to apply it practically, will inevitably lead
to superficial consideration of every subject, and even ignorance of the
fact that this is superficial consideration. As a practical result, the
person will drift through life rudderless, the sport of circumstance.
She will act by impulse and chance, and be continually at a loss how
to correct her errors. The shallowness with which women as a class are
charged is due to the fact that, their aim in life for a considerable
period not having been fixed by marriage or choice of a profession, they
do not substitute some definite interest for such remissness, and so
form the habit of intellectual laziness.
The study which an unmarried and unemployed woman should pursue may be
anything worthy of thought, but preferably a practical subject at which,
if necessary, the woman is ready to earn her living. Many a family has
been saved from financial ruin by a daughter studying the business or
the profession of the father, and, upon his breakdown from ill-health,
becoming his right-hand assistant, or, in the case of his death, even
taking his place as the family bread-winner. In these days when farming
is becoming more and more a question of the farmer's management, and
less and less of his personal manual labor, a daughter in a farmer's
family already supplied with one or more housekeepers may, as
legitimately as a son, study the science of agriculture, or one of its
many branches, such as poultry-raising or dairying, and with as certain
a prospect of success. Ample literature of the most practical and
authoritative nature on every phase of farming may be secured from the
Department of Agriculture at Washington, and the various State
universities offer special mid-winter courses in agriculture available
for any one with a common-school education, as well as send lecturers
to the farmer's institutes throughout the State.
To give examples of women who have made notable successes at farming
and its allied industries would be invidious, since there are so many
of them.
Studies that look to the possibility of the student becoming a teacher
are preeminent in the development of mentality. The science of
psychology is the foundation of the art of pedagogy, and every woman,
particularly one who may some day be required to teach, should know the
operations of the mind, how it receives, retains, and may best apply
knowledge. An essential companion of this study is physiology, the
science of the nature and functions of the bodily organs, together with
its corollary, hygiene, the care of the health. From ancient times
psychology and physiology have been considered as equally associated and
of prime importance. "A sound mind in a sound body" is an old Latin
proverb. The need of every one to "know himself," both in mind and body,
was taught by the earliest "Wise Men" of Greece. The Roman emperor
Tiberius said that any one who had reached the age of thirty in
ignorance of his physical constitution was a fool, a thought that has
been modernized, with an unnecessary extension of the age, into the
proverb, "At forty a man is either a fool or a physician."
The study of psychology is a basis for every employment or activity
which has to deal with enlightenment or persuasion of the public.
The person who would like to become a speaker or writer needs to begin
with it rather than with the study of elocution or rhetoric. The first
thing essential for him to know is himself; the second, his hearers or
readers--what is the order of progress in their enlightenment. Even
logical development of a subject is subsidiary to the practical
psychological order. Formal logic, the analysis of the process of
reasoning, is a cultural study rather than a practical one, save in
criticism both of one's own work and another's. More cultural, and at
the same time more practical, is the study of exact reasoning in the
form of some branch of mathematics. Abraham Lincoln, when he "rode the
circuit" as a lawyer, carried with him a geometry, which he studied at
every opportunity. To the mental training which it gave him was due his
success not only as a lawyer, but also as a political orator. Every one
of his speeches was as complete a demonstration of its theme as a
proposition in Euclid is of its theorem. Lincoln once said that
"demonstration" was the greatest word in the language.
Delineation of character is the chief element of fiction, and herein
literary aspirants are particularly weak, especially the women, far more
of whom than men try their hand at short stories and novels, and who are
generally without that preliminary experience in journalism which most
of the male writers have undergone. It is not enough for a novelist to
"know life"; he must also know the literary aspect of life, must have
the imaginative power to select and adapt actual experiences
artistically. Young women who write are prone to record things "just as
they happened." This is a mistake. Aristotle laid down the fundamental
principle of creative work in his statement that the purpose of art is
to fulfil the incomplete designs of nature--that is, aid nature by using
her speech, yet telling her story the way she ought to have told it but
did not. This is his great doctrine of "poetic justice."
The writing of children's stories is peculiarly the province of the
woman author, and here, because of her knowledge of the mind of the
child, she is apt to be most successful. The best of stories about
children and for children have been written by school-teachers. Of these
authors a notable instance was the late Myra Kelly, whose adaptations in
story form of her experiences as a teacher to the foreign population of
the "East Side" of New York will long remain as models of their kind.
Journalism is a sufficient field in itself for a woman writer in which
to exercise her ability, as well as a preparation for creative literary
work. The natural way to enter it is by becoming the local correspondent
of one of the newspapers of the region. In this work good judgment in
the choice of items of news, variety in the manner of stating them, and
logical order in arranging and connecting them should be cultivated.
The writing of good, plain English, rather than "smart" journalese should
be the aim. Stale, vulgar and incorrect phrases, such as "Sundayed," and
"in our midst," should be avoided. There are two tests in selecting a
news item: (1) Will it interest readers? (2) Ought they to know it?
When by these tests an item is proved to be real news that demands
publication, it should be published regardless of a third consideration,
which is too often made a primary one: Will it please the persons
concerned? This consideration should have weight only in regard to the
manner of its statement. When the news is disagreeable to the parties
concerned, it should be told with all kindness and charity. Thus the
facts of a crime should be stated, who was arrested for it, etc.; but
there should be no positive statement of the guilt of the one arrested
until this has been legally proved. Many a publisher has had to pay
heavy damages because he has overlooked, or permitted to be published,
an unwarranted statement or opinion of a reporter or correspondent.
But even though there were no law against libel, the commandment against
bearing false witness holds in ethics.
The woman at home may also become a contributor to the newspaper. Her
first articles should be statements of fact on practical subjects, such
as the results of her own or some neighbor's experiments in a household
matter of general interest, or reminiscences of matters of local history
that happen to be of current interest. Thus when a new church is
erected, the history of the old one may be properly told. Here the
amateur journalist may practise herself in interviewing people.
After such a preparation as this, one may confidently enter the active
profession of journalism as a reporter, preferably upon the paper for
which she has been writing. Since in entering any profession opportunity
for improvement and advancement in it is the first consideration, the
young reporter should cheerfully accept the low salary that is paid
beginners. There is no discrimination on account of sex in the newspaper
world. Copy is paid for according to its amount and quality, regardless
of whether it was written by a woman or a man. Women labor here, as
elsewhere, under physical disabilities in comparison with men, and yet
in compensation they have the advantage over men in their special
adaptation to certain features of newspaper work, such as the
interviewing of women, writing household and fashion articles, etc.
There are more chances for this kind of special work in large cities,
and here the aspiring newspaper woman may go, when she has proved her
ability.
Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who stands in the front rank of newspaper women,
has tersely stated the duties a woman reporter must undertake and the
sacrifices she must make, as follows: "The woman who wishes to be a
newspaper reporter should ask herself if she is able to toil from eight
to fifteen hours of the day, seven days in the week; if she is willing
to take whatever assignment may be given; to go wherever sent, to
accomplish what she is delegated to do, at whatever risk, or rebuff, or
inconvenience; to brave all kinds of weather; to give up the frivolities
of dress that women love and confine herself to a plain serviceable
suit; to renounce practically the pleasures of social life; to put her
relations to others on a business basis; to subordinate personal desires
and eliminate the 'ego'; to be careful always to disarm prejudice
against and create an impression favorable to women in this occupation;
to expect no favors on account of sex; to submit her work to the same
standard by which a man's is judged."
The salaries earned by women as reporters are, with a few notable
exceptions, not large. As low as $8 and $10 a week are paid to
beginners; from $15 to $25 a week is considered a fair salary, and $30 a
week an exceptionally good one for a woman who has not received
recognition as a thoroughly experienced reporter.
It is from the ranks of newspaper women who have gone to the large
cities and made a name for themselves as capable reporters that the
editorial staffs of the magazines are recruited. As a rule they obtain
their introductions by magazine contributions chiefly of special
articles on subjects in which they have made themselves experts.
The salaries of these positions range from $25 a week for assistant
editors to $50 and upward for the heads of departments.
Book publishers employ women of this class to edit and compile works
upon their specialties. Quite a number of women in New York earn several
thousand dollars a year each at such work, while continuing their
regular editorial labors.
Many newspaper women drift naturally into advertising writing, which
is well-paid for when cleverly done. Since the goods chiefly advertised
are largely for women, women have the preference as writers of
advertisements. Then, too, manufacturers and advertising agents pay well
for ideas useful in promoting the commodities of themselves or their
clients. Here the woman at home may find out whether she has special
ability as an advertising writer, by thinking out new and catchy ideas
for the promotion of articles which she sees are widely advertised,
and mailing these to the manufacturers. It is well if she have artistic
ability, so that she may make designs of the ideas, though this is not
essential.
It is the advertising columns of the newspapers and magazines, even more
than the reading matter, which give a demand for work in illustration.
To the woman who has talent rather than genius in drawing, illustration
and commercial art afford a far safer field, in respect to remuneration,
than the making of oil-paintings and water-colors. If ability in drawing
is conjoined with ability in designing and writing advertisements,
the earnings are more than doubled. Since payment for the individual
drawing is more customary than employing an artist at a fixed salary,
illustrating and the designing of advertisements can be done at home.
There are many young girls just out of the art-school who earn from
$25 to $50 a week by such "piece-work."
Akin to this work is the designing of book-covers, for which publishers
pay from $15 to $25 each.
Of a more mechanical nature is making the drawings for commercial
catalogues, and the prices paid are low, $9 a week being the rule for
beginners. Designers of patterns, etc., for various manufacturers
receive a similar amount at first. They may hope, after several years
of experience, to rise to $25 a week, or possibly $30 or $35.